In graph theory and theoretical computer science, the longest path problem is the problem of finding a simple path of maximum length in a given graph. A path is called simple if it does not have any repeated vertices; the length of a path may either be measured by its number of edges, or (in weighted graphs) by the sum of the weights of its edges. In contrast to the shortest path problem, which can be solved in polynomial time in graphs without negative-weight cycles, the longest path problem is NP-hard and the decision version of the problem, which asks whether a path exists of at least some given length, is NP-complete.
In graph theory, the tree-depth of a connected undirected graph is a numerical invariant of , the minimum height of a Trémaux tree for a supergraph of . This invariant and its close relatives have gone under many different names in the literature, including vertex ranking number, ordered chromatic number, and minimum elimination tree height; it is also closely related to the cycle rank of directed graphs and the star height of regular languages.
In graph theory, a caterpillar or caterpillar tree is a tree in which all the vertices are within distance 1 of a central path. Caterpillars were first studied in a series of papers by Harary and Schwenk. The name was suggested by Arthur Hobbs. As colorfully write, "A caterpillar is a tree which metamorphoses into a path when its cocoon of endpoints is removed." The following characterizations all describe the caterpillar trees: They are the trees for which removing the leaves and incident edges produces a path graph.
In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, an apex graph is a graph that can be made planar by the removal of a single vertex. The deleted vertex is called an apex of the graph. It is an apex, not the apex because an apex graph may have more than one apex; for example, in the minimal nonplanar graphs K_5 or K_3,3, every vertex is an apex. The apex graphs include graphs that are themselves planar, in which case again every vertex is an apex. The null graph is also counted as an apex graph even though it has no vertex to remove.
In graph theory, the treewidth of an undirected graph is an integer number which specifies, informally, how far the graph is from being a tree. The smallest treewidth is 1; the graphs with treewidth 1 are exactly the trees and the forests. The graphs with treewidth at most 2 are the series–parallel graphs. The maximal graphs with treewidth exactly k are called k-trees, and the graphs with treewidth at most k are called partial k-trees. Many other well-studied graph families also have bounded treewidth.
In graph theory, a circle graph is the intersection graph of a chord diagram. That is, it is an undirected graph whose vertices can be associated with a finite system of chords of a circle such that two vertices are adjacent if and only if the corresponding chords cross each other. gives an O(n2)-time algorithm that tests whether a given n-vertex undirected graph is a circle graph and, if it is, constructs a set of chords that represents it. A number of other problems that are NP-complete on general graphs have polynomial time algorithms when restricted to circle graphs.
In graph theory, boxicity is a graph invariant, introduced by Fred S. Roberts in 1969. The boxicity of a graph is the minimum dimension in which a given graph can be represented as an intersection graph of axis-parallel boxes. That is, there must exist a one-to-one correspondence between the vertices of the graph and a set of boxes, such that two boxes intersect if and only if there is an edge connecting the corresponding vertices. The figure shows a graph with six vertices, and a representation of this graph as an intersection graph of rectangles (two-dimensional boxes).
In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, a clique-sum is a way of combining two graphs by gluing them together at a clique, analogous to the connected sum operation in topology. If two graphs G and H each contain cliques of equal size, the clique-sum of G and H is formed from their disjoint union by identifying pairs of vertices in these two cliques to form a single shared clique, and then possibly deleting some of the clique edges. A k-clique-sum is a clique-sum in which both cliques have at most k vertices.
In graph theory, the planar separator theorem is a form of isoperimetric inequality for planar graphs, that states that any planar graph can be split into smaller pieces by removing a small number of vertices. Specifically, the removal of O(\sqrt{n}) vertices from an n-vertex graph (where the O invokes big O notation) can partition the graph into disjoint subgraphs each of which has at most 2n/3 vertices.
In mathematics, the graph structure theorem is a major result in the area of graph theory. The result establishes a deep and fundamental connection between the theory of graph minors and topological embeddings. The theorem is stated in the seventeenth of a series of 23 papers by Neil Robertson and Paul Seymour. Its proof is very long and involved. and are surveys accessible to nonspecialists, describing the theorem and its consequences. A minor of a graph G is any graph H that is isomorphic to a graph that can be obtained from a subgraph of G by contracting some edges.
