On the complexity of finding a potential community

An independent 2-clique of a graph is a subset of vertices that is an independent set and such that any two vertices inside have a common neighbor outside. In this paper, we study the complexity of find-ing an independent 2-clique of maximum size in several graph classes and we compare its complexity with the complexity of maximum independent set. We prove that this problem is NP-hard on apex graphs, APX-hard on line graphs, not n1 /2−-approximable on bipartite graphs and not-approximable on split graphs, while it is polynomial-time solvable on graphs of bounded degree and their complements, graphs of bounded treewidth, planar graphs, (C3, C6)-free graphs, threshold graphs, interval graphs and cographs. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017