English

The sandwich problem for odd-hole-free and even-hole-free graphs

Combinatorics 2024-04-18 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

For a property P\mathcal{P} of graphs, the P\mathcal{P}-\textsc{Sandwich-Problem}, introduced by Golumbic and Shamir (1993), is the following: Given a pair of graphs (G1,G2)(G_1, G_2) on the same vertex set VV, does there exist a graph GG such that V(G)=VV(G)=V, E(G1)E(G)E(G2)E(G_{1})\subseteq E(G) \subseteq E(G_{2}), and GG satisfies P\mathcal{P}? A {\em hole} in a graph is an induced subgraph which is a cycle of length at least four. An odd (respectively even) hole is a hole of odd (respectively even) length. Given a class of graphs C\mathcal{C} and a graph GG we say that GG is {\em C\mathcal{C}-free} if it contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to a member of C\mathcal{C}. In this paper we prove that if P\mathcal{P} is the property of being odd-hole-free or the property of being even-hole-free, then the P\mathcal{P}-\textsc{Sandwich-Problem} is NP-hard.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.10888,
  title  = {The sandwich problem for odd-hole-free and even-hole-free graphs},
  author = {Kathie Cameron and Aristotelis Chaniotis and Celina M. H. de Figueiredo and Sophie Spirkl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.10888},
  year   = {2024}
}