The min-rank of a graph was introduced by Haemers (1978) to bound the Shannon
capacity of a graph. This parameter of a graph has recently gained much more
attention from the research community after the work of Bar-Yossef et al.
(2006). In their paper, it was shown that the min-rank of a graph G
characterizes the optimal scalar linear solution of an instance of the Index
Coding with Side Information (ICSI) problem described by the graph G. It was
shown by Peeters (1996) that computing the min-rank of a general graph is an
NP-hard problem. There are very few known families of graphs whose min-ranks
can be found in polynomial time. In this work, we introduce a new family of
graphs with efficiently computed min-ranks. Specifically, we establish a
polynomial time dynamic programming algorithm to compute the min-ranks of
graphs having simple tree structures. Intuitively, such graphs are obtained by
gluing together, in a tree-like structure, any set of graphs for which the
min-ranks can be determined in polynomial time. A polynomial time algorithm to
recognize such graphs is also proposed.Comment: Accepted by Algorithmica, 30 page
