No Arabic abstract
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a $P_4$-free graph to be a cograph. This allows us to obtain a simple proof of the fact that finite $P_4$-free graphs are finite cographs. We also prove that chain complete posets whose comparability graph is a cograph are series-parallel.
Using a modified version of jeu de taquin, Novelli, Pak and Stoyanovskii gave a bijective proof of the hook-length formula for counting standard Young tableaux of fixed shape. In this paper we consider a natural extension of jeu de taquin to arbitrary posets. Given a poset P, jeu de taquin defines a map from the set of bijective labelings of the poset elements with ${1,2,...,|P|}$ to the set of linear extensions of the poset. One question of particular interest is for which posets this map yields each linear extension equally often. We analyze the double-tailed diamond poset $D_{m,n}$ and show that uniform distribution is obtained if and only if $D_{m,n}$ is d-complete. Furthermore, we observe that the extended hook-length formula for counting linear extensions on d-complete posets provides a combinatorial answer to a seemingly unrelated question, namely: Given a uniformly random standard Young tableau of fixed shape, what is the expected value of the left-most entry in the second row?
Motivated by generalizing Khovanovs categorification of the Jones polynomial, we study functors $F$ from thin posets $P$ to abelian categories $mathcal{A}$. Such functors $F$ produce cohomology theories $H^*(P,mathcal{A},F)$. We find that CW posets, that is, face posets of regular CW complexes, satisfy conditions making them particularly suitable for the construction of such cohomology theories. We consider a category of tuples $(P,mathcal{A},F,c)$, where $c$ is a certain ${1,-1}$-coloring of the cover relations in $P$, and show the cohomology arising from a tuple $(P,mathcal{A},F,c)$ is functorial, and independent of the coloring $c$ up to natural isomorphism. Such a construction provides a framework for the categorification of a variety of familiar topological/combinatorial invariants: anything expressible as a rank-alternating sum over a thin poset.
Arboricity is a graph parameter akin to chromatic number, in that it seeks to partition the vertices into the smallest number of sparse subgraphs. Where for the chromatic number we are partitioning the vertices into independent sets, for the arboricity we want to partition the vertices into cycle-free subsets (i.e., forests). Arboricity is NP-hard in general, and our focus is on the arboricity of cographs. For arboricity two, we obtain the complete list of minimal cograph obstructions. These minimal obstructions do generalize to higher arboricities; however, we no longer have a complete list, and in fact, the number of minimal cograph obstructions grows exponentially with arboricity. We obtain bounds on their size and the height of their cotrees. More generally, we consider the following common generalization of colouring and partition into forests: given non-negative integers $p$ and $q$, we ask if a given cograph $G$ admits a vertex partition into $p$ forests and $q$ independent sets. We give a polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm for this problem. In fact, the algorithm solves a more general problem which also includes several other problems such as finding a maximum $q$-colourable subgraph, maximum subgraph of arboricity-$p$, minimum vertex feedback set and minimum $q$ of a $q$-colourable vertex feedback set.
We show that every countable cograph has either one or infinitely many siblings. This answers, very partially, a conjecture of Thomasse. The main tools are the notion of well quasi ordering and the correspondence between cographs and some labelled ordered trees.
We consider 3 (weighted) posets associated with a graph G - the poset P(G) of distinct induced unlabelled subgraphs, the lattice Omega(G) of distinct unlabelled graphs induced by connected partitions, and the poset Q(G) of distinct unlabelled edge-subgraphs. We study these posets given up to isomorphism, and their relation to the reconstruction conjectures. We show that when G is not a star or a disjoint union of edges, P(G) and Omega(G) can be constructed from each other. The result implies that trees are reconstructible from their abstract bond lattice. We present many results on the reconstruction questions about the chromatic symmetric function and the symmetric Tutte polynomial. In particular, we show that the symmetric Tutte polynomial of a tree can be constructed from its chromatic symmetric function. We classify graphs that are not reconstructible from their abstract edge-subgraph posets, and further show that the families presented here are the only graphs not Q-reconstructible if and only if the edge reconstruction conjecture is true. Let f be a bijection from the set of all unlabelled graphs to itself such that for all unlabelled graphs G and H, hom(G,H) = hom(f(G), f(H)). We conjecture that f is an identity map. We show that this conjecture is weaker than the edge reconstruction conjecture. Our conjecture is motivated by homomorphism cancellation results due to Lovasz.