Clique graph

In graph theory, a clique graph of an undirected graph G is another graph K(G) that represents the structure of cliques in G. Clique graphs were discussed at least as early as 1968, and a characterization of clique graphs was given in 1971. A clique of a graph G is a set X of vertices of G with the property that every pair of distinct vertices in X are adjacent in G. A maximal clique of a graph G is a clique X of vertices of G, such that there is no clique Y of vertices of G that contains all of X and at least one other vertex. Given a graph G, its clique graph K(G) is a graph such that every vertex of K(G) represents a maximal clique of G; and two vertices of K(G) are adjacent when the underlying cliques in G share at least one vertex in common. The clique graph K(G) can also be characterized as the intersection graph of the maximal cliques of G. A graph H is the clique graph K(G) of another graph if and only if there exists a collection C of cliques in H whose union covers all the edges of H, such that C forms a Helly family. This means that, if S is a subset of C with the property that every two members of S have a non-empty intersection, then S itself should also have a non-empty intersection. However, the cliques in C do not necessarily have to be maximal cliques. When H =K(G), a family C of this type may be constructed in which each clique in C corresponds to a vertex v in G, and consists of the cliques in G that contain v. These cliques all have v in their intersection, so they form a clique in H. The family C constructed in this way has the Helly property, because any subfamily of C with pairwise nonempty intersections must correspond to a clique in G, which can be extended to a maximal clique that belongs to the intersection of the subfamily. Conversely, when H has a Helly family C of its cliques, covering all edges of H, then it is the clique graph K(G) for a graph G whose vertices are the disjoint union of the vertices of H and the elements of C.