Witness (Delaunay) Graphs

Proximity graphs are used in several areas in which a neighborliness relationship for input data sets is a useful tool in their analysis, and have also received substantial attention from the graph drawing community, as they are a natural way of implicitly representing graphs. However, as a tool for graph representation, proximity graphs have some limitations that may be overcome with suitable generalizations. We introduce a generalization, witness graphs, that encompasses both the goal of more power and flexibility for graph drawing issues and a wider spectrum for neighborhood analysis. We study in detail two concrete examples, both related to Delaunay graphs, and consider as well some problems on stabbing geometric objects and point set discrimination, that can be naturally described in terms of witness graphs.Comment: 27 pages. JCCGG 200

On The Center Sets and Center Numbers of Some Graph Classes

For a set $S$ of vertices and the vertex $v$ in a connected graph $G$, $\displaystyle\max_{x \in S}d(x,v)$ is called the $S$-eccentricity of $v$ in $G$. The set of vertices with minimum $S$-eccentricity is called the $S$-center of $G$. Any set $A$ of vertices of $G$ such that $A$ is an $S$-center for some set $S$ of vertices of $G$ is called a center set. We identify the center sets of certain classes of graphs namely, Block graphs, $K_{m,n}$, $K_n-e$, wheel graphs, odd cycles and symmetric even graphs and enumerate them for many of these graph classes. We also introduce the concept of center number which is defined as the number of distinct center sets of a graph and determine the center number of some graph classes

Linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs II. Vertex-minor obstructions

In the companion paper [Linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs I. A polynomial-time algorithm, Algorithmica 78(1):342--377, 2017], we presented a characterization of the linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs, from which we derived an algorithm to compute it in polynomial time. In this paper, we investigate structural properties of distance-hereditary graphs based on this characterization. First, we prove that for a fixed tree $T$, every distance-hereditary graph of sufficiently large linear rank-width contains a vertex-minor isomorphic to $T$. We extend this property to bigger graph classes, namely, classes of graphs whose prime induced subgraphs have bounded linear rank-width. Here, prime graphs are graphs containing no splits. We conjecture that for every tree $T$, every graph of sufficiently large linear rank-width contains a vertex-minor isomorphic to $T$. Our result implies that it is sufficient to prove this conjecture for prime graphs. For a class $\Phi$ of graphs closed under taking vertex-minors, a graph $G$ is called a vertex-minor obstruction for $\Phi$ if $G\notin \Phi$ but all of its proper vertex-minors are contained in $\Phi$. Secondly, we provide, for each $k\ge 2$, a set of distance-hereditary graphs that contains all distance-hereditary vertex-minor obstructions for graphs of linear rank-width at most $k$. Also, we give a simpler way to obtain the known vertex-minor obstructions for graphs of linear rank-width at most $1$.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures, 1 table, revised journal version. A preliminary version of Section 5 appeared in the proceedings of WG1

Linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs I. A polynomial-time algorithm

Linear rank-width is a linearized variation of rank-width, and it is deeply related to matroid path-width. In this paper, we show that the linear rank-width of every $n$-vertex distance-hereditary graph, equivalently a graph of rank-width at most $1$, can be computed in time $\mathcal{O}(n^2\cdot \log_2 n)$, and a linear layout witnessing the linear rank-width can be computed with the same time complexity. As a corollary, we show that the path-width of every $n$-element matroid of branch-width at most $2$ can be computed in time $\mathcal{O}(n^2\cdot \log_2 n)$, provided that the matroid is given by an independent set oracle. To establish this result, we present a characterization of the linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs in terms of their canonical split decompositions. This characterization is similar to the known characterization of the path-width of forests given by Ellis, Sudborough, and Turner [The vertex separation and search number of a graph. Inf. Comput., 113(1):50--79, 1994]. However, different from forests, it is non-trivial to relate substructures of the canonical split decomposition of a graph with some substructures of the given graph. We introduce a notion of `limbs' of canonical split decompositions, which correspond to certain vertex-minors of the original graph, for the right characterization.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figures, 2 table. A preliminary version appeared in the proceedings of WG'1

Travelling on Graphs with Small Highway Dimension

We study the Travelling Salesperson (TSP) and the Steiner Tree problem (STP) in graphs of low highway dimension. This graph parameter was introduced by Abraham et al. [SODA 2010] as a model for transportation networks, on which TSP and STP naturally occur for various applications in logistics. It was previously shown [Feldmann et al. ICALP 2015] that these problems admit a quasi-polynomial time approximation scheme (QPTAS) on graphs of constant highway dimension. We demonstrate that a significant improvement is possible in the special case when the highway dimension is 1, for which we present a fully-polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS). We also prove that STP is weakly NP-hard for these restricted graphs. For TSP we show NP-hardness for graphs of highway dimension 6, which answers an open problem posed in [Feldmann et al. ICALP 2015]

Partitioning Perfect Graphs into Stars

The partition of graphs into "nice" subgraphs is a central algorithmic problem with strong ties to matching theory. We study the partitioning of undirected graphs into same-size stars, a problem known to be NP-complete even for the case of stars on three vertices. We perform a thorough computational complexity study of the problem on subclasses of perfect graphs and identify several polynomial-time solvable cases, for example, on interval graphs and bipartite permutation graphs, and also NP-complete cases, for example, on grid graphs and chordal graphs.Comment: Manuscript accepted to Journal of Graph Theor

Polynomial kernelization for removing induced claws and diamonds

A graph is called (claw,diamond)-free if it contains neither a claw (a $K_{1,3}$) nor a diamond (a $K_4$ with an edge removed) as an induced subgraph. Equivalently, (claw,diamond)-free graphs can be characterized as line graphs of triangle-free graphs, or as linear dominoes, i.e., graphs in which every vertex is in at most two maximal cliques and every edge is in exactly one maximal clique. In this paper we consider the parameterized complexity of the (claw,diamond)-free Edge Deletion problem, where given a graph $G$ and a parameter $k$, the question is whether one can remove at most $k$ edges from $G$ to obtain a (claw,diamond)-free graph. Our main result is that this problem admits a polynomial kernel. We complement this finding by proving that, even on instances with maximum degree $6$, the problem is NP-complete and cannot be solved in time $2^{o(k)}\cdot |V(G)|^{O(1)}$ unless the Exponential Time Hypothesis fai

A Center Transversal Theorem for Hyperplanes and Applications to Graph Drawing

Motivated by an open problem from graph drawing, we study several partitioning problems for line and hyperplane arrangements. We prove a ham-sandwich cut theorem: given two sets of n lines in R^2, there is a line l such that in both line sets, for both halfplanes delimited by l, there are n^{1/2} lines which pairwise intersect in that halfplane, and this bound is tight; a centerpoint theorem: for any set of n lines there is a point such that for any halfplane containing that point there are (n/3)^{1/2} of the lines which pairwise intersect in that halfplane. We generalize those results in higher dimension and obtain a center transversal theorem, a same-type lemma, and a positive portion Erdos-Szekeres theorem for hyperplane arrangements. This is done by formulating a generalization of the center transversal theorem which applies to set functions that are much more general than measures. Back to Graph Drawing (and in the plane), we completely solve the open problem that motivated our search: there is no set of n labelled lines that are universal for all n-vertex labelled planar graphs. As a side note, we prove that every set of n (unlabelled) lines is universal for all n-vertex (unlabelled) planar graphs