On the Complexity of Finding a Sun in a Graph

The sun is the graph obtained from a cycle of length even and at least six by adding edges to make the even-indexed vertices pairwise adjacent. Suns play an important role in the study of strongly chordal graphs. A graph is chordal if it does not contain an induced cycle of length at least four. A graph is strongly chordal if it is chordal and every even cycle has a chord joining vertices whose distance on the cycle is odd. Farber proved that a graph is strongly chordal if and only if it is chordal and contains no induced suns. There are well known polynomial-time algorithms for recognizing a sun in a chordal graph. Recently, polynomial-time algorithms for finding a sun for a larger class of graphs, the so-called HHD-free graphs (graphs containing no house, hole, or domino), have been discovered. In this paper, we prove the problem of deciding whether an arbitrary graph contains a sun is NP-complete

A Note on Quasi-Triangulated Graphs

A graph is quasi-triangulated if each of its induced subgraphs has a vertex which is either simplicial (its neighbors form a clique) or cosimplicial (its nonneighbors form an independent set). We prove that a graph G is quasi-triangulated if and only if each induced subgraph H of G contains a vertex that does not lie in a hole, or an antihole, where a hole is a chordless cycle with at least four vertices, and an antihole is the complement of a hole. We also present an algorithm that recognizes a quasi-triangulated graph in O(nm) time

A refinement on the structure of vertex-critical (P5P_5, gem)-free graphs

We give a new, stronger proof that there are only finitely many $k$-vertex-critical ($P_5$,~gem)-free graphs for all $k$. Our proof further refines the structure of these graphs and allows for the implementation of a simple exhaustive computer search to completely list all $6$- and $7$-vertex-critical $(P_5$, gem)-free graphs. Our results imply the existence of polynomial-time certifying algorithms to decide the $k$-colourability of $(P_5$, gem)-free graphs for all $k$ where the certificate is either a $k$-colouring or a $(k+1)$-vertex-critical induced subgraph. Our complete lists for $k\le 7$ allow for the implementation of these algorithms for all $k\le 6$

Infinite families of kk-vertex-critical (P5P_5, C5C_5)-free graphs

A graph is $k$-vertex-critical if $\chi(G)=k$ but $\chi(G-v)<k$ for all $v\in V(G)$. We construct a new infinite families of $k$-vertex-critical $(P_5,C_5)$-free graphs for all $k\ge 6$. Our construction generalizes known constructions for $4$-vertex-critical $P_7$-free graphs and $5$-vertex-critical $P_5$-free graphs and is in contrast to the fact that there are only finitely many $5$-vertex-critical $(P_5,C_5)$-free graphs. In fact, our construction is actually even more well-structured, being $(2P_2,K_3+P_1,C_5)$-free

The Complexity of the List Partition Problem for Graphs

The k-partition problem is as follows: Given a graph G and a positive integer k, partition the vertices of G into at most k parts A1, A2, . . . , Ak, where it may be specified that Ai induces a stable set, a clique, or an arbitrary subgraph, and pairs Ai, Aj (i≠j) be completely nonadjacent, completely adjacent, or arbitrarily adjacent. The list k-partition problem generalizes the k-partition problem by specifying for each vertex x, a list L(x) of parts in which it is allowed to be placed. Many well-known graph problems can be formulated as list k-partition problems: e.g., 3-colorability, clique cutset, stable cutset, homogeneous set, skew partition, and 2-clique cutset. We classify, with the exception of two polynomially equivalent problems, each list 4-partition problem as either solvable in polynomial time or NP-complete. In doing so, we provide polynomial-time algorithms for many problems whose polynomial-time solvability was open, including the list 2-clique cutset problem. This also allows us to classify each list generalized 2-clique cutset problem and list generalized skew partition problem as solvable in polynomial time or NP-complete