Complexity of Coloring Graphs without Paths and Cycles

Let $P_t$ and $C_\ell$ denote a path on $t$ vertices and a cycle on $\ell$ vertices, respectively. In this paper we study the $k$-coloring problem for $(P_t,C_\ell)$-free graphs. Maffray and Morel, and Bruce, Hoang and Sawada, have proved that 3-colorability of $P_5$-free graphs has a finite forbidden induced subgraphs characterization, while Hoang, Moore, Recoskie, Sawada, and Vatshelle have shown that $k$-colorability of $P_5$-free graphs for $k \geq 4$ does not. These authors have also shown, aided by a computer search, that 4-colorability of $(P_5,C_5)$-free graphs does have a finite forbidden induced subgraph characterization. We prove that for any $k$, the $k$-colorability of $(P_6,C_4)$-free graphs has a finite forbidden induced subgraph characterization. We provide the full lists of forbidden induced subgraphs for $k=3$ and $k=4$. As an application, we obtain certifying polynomial time algorithms for 3-coloring and 4-coloring $(P_6,C_4)$-free graphs. (Polynomial time algorithms have been previously obtained by Golovach, Paulusma, and Song, but those algorithms are not certifying); To complement these results we show that in most other cases the $k$-coloring problem for $(P_t,C_\ell)$-free graphs is NP-complete. Specifically, for $\ell=5$ we show that $k$-coloring is NP-complete for $(P_t,C_5)$-free graphs when $k \ge 4$ and $t \ge 7$; for $\ell \ge 6$ we show that $k$-coloring is NP-complete for $(P_t,C_\ell)$-free graphs when $k \ge 5$, $t \ge 6$; and additionally, for $\ell=7$, we show that $k$-coloring is also NP-complete for $(P_t,C_7)$-free graphs if $k = 4$ and $t\ge 9$. This is the first systematic study of the complexity of the $k$-coloring problem for $(P_t,C_\ell)$-free graphs. We almost completely classify the complexity for the cases when $k \geq 4, \ell \geq 4$, and identify the last three open cases

De Bruijn graphs and DNA graphs

In this paper we prove the NP-hardness of various recognition problems for subgraphs of De Bruijn graphs. In particular, the recognition of DNA graphs is shown to be NP-hard; DNA graphs are the vertex induced subgraphs of De Bruijn graphs over a four letter alphabet. As a consequence, two open questions from a recent paper by Blazewicz, Hertz, Kobler & de Werra [Discrete Applied Mathematics 98, 1999] are answered in the negative

Complexity of coloring graphs without forbidden induced subgraphs

We give a complete characterization of parameter graphs H for which the problem of coloring H-free graphs is polynomial and for which it is NP-complete. We further initiate a study of this problem for two forbidden subgraphs

Collective tree spanners of graphs

In this paper we introduce a new notion of collective tree spanners. We say that a graph G =(V,E) admits a system of µ collective additive tree r-spanners if there is a system T (G) of at most µ spanning trees of G such that for any two vertices x, y of G a spanning tree T ∈T(G) exists such that dT (x, y) ≤ dG(x, y) +r. Among other results, we show that any chordal graph, chordal bipartite graph or cocomparability graph admits a system of at most log 2 n collective additive tree 2–spanners and any c-chordal graph admits a system of at most log 2 n collective additive tree (2⌊c/2⌋)–spanners. Towards establishing these results, we present a general property for graphs, called (α, r)– decomposition, and show that any (α, r)–decomposable graph G with n vertices admits a system of at most log 1/α n collective additive tree 2r– spanners. We discuss also an application of the collective tree spanners to the problem of designing compact and efficient routing schemes in graphs