English

Computing metric hulls in graphs

Combinatorics 2018-05-01 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

We prove that, given a closure function the smallest preimage of a closed set can be calculated in polynomial time in the number of closed sets. This confirms a conjecture of Albenque and Knauer and implies that there is a polynomial time algorithm to compute the convex hull-number of a graph, when all its convex subgraphs are given as input. We then show that computing if the smallest preimage of a closed set is logarithmic in the size of the ground set is LOGSNP-complete if only the ground set is given. A special instance of this problem is computing the dimension of a poset given its linear extension graph, that was conjectured to be in P. The intent to show that the latter problem is LOGSNP-complete leads to several interesting questions and to the definition of the isometric hull, i.e., a smallest isometric subgraph containing a given set of vertices SS. While for S=2|S|=2 an isometric hull is just a shortest path, we show that computing the isometric hull of a set of vertices is NP-complete even if S=3|S|=3. Finally, we consider the problem of computing the isometric hull-number of a graph and show that computing it is Σ2P\Sigma^P_2 complete.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.02958,
  title  = {Computing metric hulls in graphs},
  author = {Kolja Knauer and Nicolas Nisse},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.02958},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

13 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:07:15.971Z