Forbidden graph characterization
In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, many important families of graphs can be described by a finite set of individual graphs that do not belong to the family and further exclude all graphs from the family which contain any of these forbidden graphs as (induced) subgraph or minor.
A prototypical example of this phenomenon is Kuratowski's theorem, which states that a graph is planar (can be drawn without crossings in the plane) if and only if it does not contain either of two forbidden graphs, the complete graph K5 and the complete bipartite graph K3,3. For Kuratowski's theorem, the notion of containment is that of graph homeomorphism, in which a subdivision of one graph appears as a subgraph of the other. Thus, every graph either has a planar drawing (in which case it belongs to the family of planar graphs) or it has a subdivision of at least one of these two graphs as a subgraph (in which case it does not belong to the planar graphs).
Definition
More generally, a forbidden graph characterization is a method of specifying a family of graph, or hypergraph, structures, by specifying substructures that are forbidden to exist within any graph in the family. Different families vary in the nature of what is forbidden. In general, a structure G is a member of a family [math]\displaystyle{ \mathcal{F} }[/math] if and only if a forbidden substructure is not contained in G. The forbidden substructure might be one of:
- subgraphs, smaller graphs obtained from subsets of the vertices and edges of a larger graph,
- induced subgraphs, smaller graphs obtained by selecting a subset of the vertices and using all edges with both endpoints in that subset,
- homeomorphic subgraphs (also called topological minors), smaller graphs obtained from subgraphs by collapsing paths of degree-two vertices to single edges, or
- graph minors, smaller graphs obtained from subgraphs by arbitrary edge contractions.
The set of structures that are forbidden from belonging to a given graph family can also be called an obstruction set for that family.
Forbidden graph characterizations may be used in algorithms for testing whether a graph belongs to a given family. In many cases, it is possible to test in polynomial time whether a given graph contains any of the members of the obstruction set, and therefore whether it belongs to the family defined by that obstruction set.
In order for a family to have a forbidden graph characterization, with a particular type of substructure, the family must be closed under substructures. That is, every substructure (of a given type) of a graph in the family must be another graph in the family. Equivalently, if a graph is not part of the family, all larger graphs containing it as a substructure must also be excluded from the family. When this is true, there always exists an obstruction set (the set of graphs that are not in the family but whose smaller substructures all belong to the family). However, for some notions of what a substructure is, this obstruction set could be infinite. The Robertson–Seymour theorem proves that, for the particular case of graph minors, a family that is closed under minors always has a finite obstruction set.
List of forbidden characterizations for graphs and hypergraphs
| Family | Obstructions | Relation | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forests | Loops, pairs of parallel edges, and cycles of all lengths | Subgraph | Definition |
| A loop (for multigraphs) or triangle K3 (for simple graphs) | Graph minor | Definition | |
| Linear forests | [A loop / triangle K3 (see above)] and star K1,3 | Graph minor | Definition |
| Claw-free graphs | Star K1,3 | Induced subgraph | Definition |
| Comparability graphs | Induced subgraph | ||
| Triangle-free graphs | Triangle K3 | Induced subgraph | Definition |
| Planar graphs | K5 and K3,3 | Homeomorphic subgraph | Kuratowski's theorem |
| K5 and K3,3 | Graph minor | Wagner's theorem | |
| Outerplanar graphs | K4 and K2,3 | Graph minor | (Diestel 2000),[1] p. 107 |
| Outer 1-planar graphs | Six forbidden minors | Graph minor | (Auer Bachmaier)[2] |
| Graphs of fixed genus | A finite obstruction set | Graph minor | (Diestel 2000),[1] p. 275 |
| Apex graphs | A finite obstruction set | Graph minor | |
| Linklessly embeddable graphs | The Petersen family | Graph minor | |
| Bipartite graphs | Odd cycles | Subgraph | [3] |
| Chordal graphs | Cycles of length 4 or more | Induced subgraph | |
| Perfect graphs | Cycles of odd length 5 or more or their complements | Induced subgraph | [4] |
| Line graph of graphs | 9 forbidden subgraphs | Induced subgraph | [5] |
| Graph unions of cactus graphs | The four-vertex diamond graph formed by removing an edge from the complete graph K4 | Graph minor | |
| Ladder graphs | K2,3 and its dual graph | Homeomorphic subgraph | |
| Split graphs | [math]\displaystyle{ C_4, C_5, \bar{C}_4 \left(= K_2 + K_2\right) }[/math] | Induced subgraph | [6] |
| 2-connected series–parallel (treewidth ≤ 2, branchwidth ≤ 2) | K4 | Graph minor | (Diestel 2000),[1] p. 327 |
| Treewidth ≤ 3 | K5, octahedron, pentagonal prism, Wagner graph | Graph minor | |
| Branchwidth ≤ 3 | K5, octahedron, cube, Wagner graph | Graph minor | |
| Complement-reducible graphs (cographs) | 4-vertex path P4 | Induced subgraph | [7] |
| Trivially perfect graphs | 4-vertex path P4 and 4-vertex cycle C4 | Induced subgraph | [8] |
| Threshold graphs | 4-vertex path P4, 4-vertex cycle C4, and complement of C4 | Induced subgraph | [8] |
| Line graph of 3-uniform linear hypergraphs | A finite list of forbidden induced subgraphs with minimum degree at least 19 | Induced subgraph | [9] |
| Line graph of k-uniform linear hypergraphs, k > 3 | A finite list of forbidden induced subgraphs with minimum edge degree at least 2k2 − 3k + 1 | Induced subgraph | [10][11] |
| Graphs ΔY-reducible to a single vertex | A finite list of at least 68 billion distinct (1,2,3)-clique sums | Graph minor | [12] |
| Graphs of spectral radius at most [math]\displaystyle{ \lambda }[/math] | A finite obstruction set exists if and only if [math]\displaystyle{ \lambda \lt \sqrt{2 + \sqrt{5}} }[/math] and [math]\displaystyle{ \lambda \neq \beta_m^{1/2} + \beta_m^{-1/2} }[/math] for any [math]\displaystyle{ m \ge 2 }[/math], where [math]\displaystyle{ \beta_m }[/math] is the largest root of [math]\displaystyle{ x^{m+1} = 1 + x + \dots + x^{m-1} }[/math]. | Subgraph / induced subgraph | [13] |
| Cluster graphs | three-vertex path graph | Induced subgraph | |
| General theorems | |||
| A family defined by an induced-hereditary property | A, possibly non-finite, obstruction set | Induced subgraph | |
| A family defined by a minor-hereditary property | A finite obstruction set | Graph minor | Robertson–Seymour theorem |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Diestel, Reinhard (2000), Graph Theory, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 173, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 0-387-98976-5.
- ↑ Auer, Christopher; Bachmaier, Christian; Brandenburg, Franz J.; Gleißner, Andreas; Hanauer, Kathrin; Neuwirth, Daniel; Reislhuber, Josef (2013), "Recognizing outer 1-planar graphs in linear time", in Wismath, Stephen; Wolff, Alexander, 21st International Symposium, GD 2013, Bordeaux, France, September 23-25, 2013, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 8242, pp. 107–118, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-03841-4_10.
- ↑ Béla Bollobás (1998) "Modern Graph Theory", Springer, ISBN:0-387-98488-7 p. 9
- ↑ "The strong perfect graph theorem", Annals of Mathematics 164 (1): 51–229, 2006, doi:10.4007/annals.2006.164.51, http://people.math.gatech.edu/~thomas/PAP/spgc.pdf.
- ↑ Beineke, L. W. (1968), "Derived graphs of digraphs", in Sachs, H.; Voss, H.-J.; Walter, H.-J., Beiträge zur Graphentheorie, Leipzig: Teubner, pp. 17–33.
- ↑ Földes, Stéphane (1977a), "Split graphs", Proceedings of the Eighth Southeastern Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing (Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, La., 1977), Congressus Numerantium, XIX, Winnipeg: Utilitas Math., pp. 311–315
- ↑ Seinsche, D. (1974), "On a property of the class of n-colorable graphs", Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B 16 (2): 191–193, doi:10.1016/0095-8956(74)90063-X
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Trivially perfect graphs", Discrete Mathematics 24 (1): 105–107, 1978, doi:10.1016/0012-365X(78)90178-4.
- ↑ Metelsky, Yury (1997), "On line graphs of linear 3-uniform hypergraphs", Journal of Graph Theory 25 (4): 243–251, doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0118(199708)25:4<243::AID-JGT1>3.0.CO;2-K
- ↑ Jacobson, M. S.; Kézdy, Andre E.; Lehel, Jeno (1997), "Recognizing intersection graphs of linear uniform hypergraphs", Graphs and Combinatorics 13 (4): 359–367, doi:10.1007/BF03353014
- ↑ Naik, Ranjan N.; Rao, S. B. (1982), "Intersection graphs of k-uniform hypergraphs", European Journal of Combinatorics 3: 159–172, doi:10.1016/s0195-6698(82)80029-2
- ↑ Yu, Yanming (2006), "More forbidden minors for wye-delta-wye reducibility", The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 13, doi:10.37236/1033 Website
- ↑ Jiang, Zilin; Polyanskii, Alexandr (2020-03-01). "Forbidden Subgraphs for Graphs of Bounded Spectral Radius, with Applications to Equiangular Lines" (in en). Israel Journal of Mathematics 236 (1): 393–421. doi:10.1007/s11856-020-1983-2. ISSN 1565-8511. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11856-020-1983-2.
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