23 research outputs found
Separators in Region Intersection Graphs
For undirected graphs G=(V,E) and G_0=(V_0,E_0), say that G is a region intersection graph over G_0 if there is a family of connected subsets {R_u subseteq V_0 : u in V} of G_0 such that {u,v} in E iff R_u cap R_v neq emptyset.
We show if G_0 excludes the complete graph K_h as a minor for some h geq 1, then every region intersection graph G over G_0 with m edges has a balanced separator with at most c_h sqrt{m} nodes, where c_h is a constant depending only on h. If G additionally has uniformly bounded vertex degrees, then such a separator is found by spectral partitioning.
A string graph is the intersection graph of continuous arcs in the plane. String graphs are precisely region intersection graphs over planar graphs. Thus the preceding result implies that every string graph with m edges has a balanced separator of size O(sqrt{m}). This bound is optimal, as it generalizes the planar separator theorem. It confirms a conjecture of Fox and Pach (2010), and improves over the O(sqrt{m} log m) bound of Matousek (2013)
Optimality program in segment and string graphs
Planar graphs are known to allow subexponential algorithms running in time
or for most of the paradigmatic
problems, while the brute-force time is very likely to be
asymptotically best on general graphs. Intrigued by an algorithm packing curves
in by Fox and Pach [SODA'11], we investigate which
problems have subexponential algorithms on the intersection graphs of curves
(string graphs) or segments (segment intersection graphs) and which problems
have no such algorithms under the ETH (Exponential Time Hypothesis). Among our
results, we show that, quite surprisingly, 3-Coloring can also be solved in
time on string graphs while an algorithm running
in time for 4-Coloring even on axis-parallel segments (of unbounded
length) would disprove the ETH. For 4-Coloring of unit segments, we show a
weaker ETH lower bound of which exploits the celebrated
Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres theorem. The subexponential running time also carries over
to Min Feedback Vertex Set but not to Min Dominating Set and Min Independent
Dominating Set.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figure
Product structure of graph classes with strongly sublinear separators
We investigate the product structure of hereditary graph classes admitting
strongly sublinear separators. We characterise such classes as subgraphs of the
strong product of a star and a complete graph of strongly sublinear size. In a
more precise result, we show that if any hereditary graph class
admits separators, then for any fixed
every -vertex graph in is a subgraph
of the strong product of a graph with bounded tree-depth and a complete
graph of size . This result holds with if
we allow to have tree-depth . Moreover, using extensions of
classical isoperimetric inequalties for grids graphs, we show the dependence on
in our results and the above bound are
both best possible. We prove that -vertex graphs of bounded treewidth are
subgraphs of the product of a graph with tree-depth and a complete graph of
size , which is best possible. Finally, we investigate the
conjecture that for any hereditary graph class that admits
separators, every -vertex graph in is a
subgraph of the strong product of a graph with bounded tree-width and a
complete graph of size . We prove this for various classes
of interest.Comment: v2: added bad news subsection; v3: removed section "Polynomial
Expansion Classes" which had an error, added section "Lower Bounds", and
added a new author; v4: minor revisions and corrections
Subexponential-Time Algorithms for Finding Large Induced Sparse Subgraphs
Let C and D be hereditary graph classes. Consider the following problem: given a graph G in D, find a largest, in terms of the number of vertices, induced subgraph of G that belongs to C. We prove that it can be solved in 2^{o(n)} time, where n is the number of vertices of G, if the following conditions are satisfied:
- the graphs in C are sparse, i.e., they have linearly many edges in terms of the number of vertices;
- the graphs in D admit balanced separators of size governed by their density, e.g., O(Delta) or O(sqrt{m}), where Delta and m denote the maximum degree and the number of edges, respectively; and
- the considered problem admits a single-exponential fixed-parameter algorithm when parameterized by the treewidth of the input graph.
This leads, for example, to the following corollaries for specific classes C and D:
- a largest induced forest in a P_t-free graph can be found in 2^{O~(n^{2/3})} time, for every fixed t; and
- a largest induced planar graph in a string graph can be found in 2^{O~(n^{3/4})} time
A multipartite analogue of Dilworth's Theorem
We prove that every partially ordered set on elements contains
subsets such that either each of these subsets has
size and, for every , every element in is less
than or equal to every element in , or each of these subsets has size
and, for every , every element in
is incomparable with every element in for . This answers a
question of the first author from 2006. As a corollary, we prove for each
positive integer there is such that for any partial orders
on a set of elements, there exists subsets
each of size at least such that
for each partial order , either
for any tuple of elements
, or
for any , or is incomparable with for
any , and . This improves on a 2009 result of
Pach and the first author motivated by problems in discrete geometry
On the Size of Outer-String Representations
Outer-string graphs, i.e., graphs that can be represented as intersection of curves in 2D, all of which end in the outer-face, have recently received much interest, especially since it was shown that the independent set problem can be solved efficiently in such graphs. However, the run-time for the independent set problem depends on N, the number of segments in an outer-string representation, rather than the number n of vertices of the graph. In this paper, we argue that for some outer-string graphs, N must be exponential in n. We also study some special string graphs, viz. monotone string graphs, and argue that for them N can be assumed to be polynomial in n. Finally we give an algorithm for independent set in so-called strip-grounded monotone outer-string graphs that is polynomial in n