on the complexity of finding chordless paths in bipartite graphs and some interval operators in graphs and hypergraphs in this paper we show that the problem of finding a chordless path between a vertex s and a vertex t containing a vertex v remains np complete in bipartite graphs thereby strengthening the previous results on the same problem we show a relation between this problem and two interval operators the simple path interval operator in hypergraphs and the even chorded path interval operator in graphs we show that the problem of computing the two mentioned intervals is np complete

some properties of graphs determined by edge zeta functions in 1989 hashimoto introduced an edge zeta function of a finite graph which is a generalization of the ihara zeta function the edge zeta function is the reciprocal of a polynomial in twice as many indeterminants as edges in the graph and can be computed via a determinant expression we look at graph properties which we can determine using the edge zeta function in particular the edge zeta function is enough to deduce the clique number the number of hamiltonian cycles and whether a graph is perfect or chordal finally we present a new example illustrating that the ihara zeta function cannot necessarily do the same

joint data and channel estimation using blind trellis search techniques a novel method of maximum likelihood sequence estimation is proposed for data that are transmitted over unknown linear channels this procedure does not require a startup sequence for estimating the channel impulse response rather the data and the channel are simultaneously estimated it is implemented without any loss of optimality by a trellis search algorithm which searches for the best data sequence from among a number of hypothesized trellises which are constructed from the observed sequence the number of states in each trellis and the number of trellises grow exponentially with the channel memory a suboptimal trellis search algorithm is proposed whose complexity at best is slightly higher than that of the adaptive viterbi algorithm operating with a known channel response a simplified channel estimation algorithm when the number of data alphabets is greater than 2 is also proposed fast convergence of the algorithm in estimating the channel is demonstrated for binary pulse amplitude modulation over a variety of channels convergence over a wide range of snr occurs within 100 symbols the channel estimation algorithm for multi level signals converges within 500 1000 symbols we finally present an application of this algorithm to the problem of sequence estimation in the presence of rapidly time varying intersymbol interference the algorithm provides reliable zero delay decisions which results in a better channel tracking algorithm when compared to previously proposed schemes

a theoretical investigation into the performance of the hopfield model an analysis is made of the behavior of the hopfield model as a content addressable memory cam and as a method of solving the traveling salesman problem tsp the analysis is based on the geometry of the subspace set up by the degenerate eigenvalues of the connection matrix the dynamic equation is shown to be equivalent to a projection of the input vector onto this subspace in the case of content addressable memory it is shown that spurious fixed points can occur at any corner of the hypercube that is on or near the subspace spanned by the memory vectors analysed is why the network can frequently converge to an invalid solution when applied to the traveling salesman problem energy function with these expressions the network can be made robust and can reliably solve the traveling salesman problem with tour sizes of 50 cities or more

np hard graph problems and boundary classes of graphs any graph problem which is np hard in general graphs becomes polynomial time solvable when restricted to graphs in special classes when does a difficult problem become easy to answer this question we study the notion of boundary classes in the present paper we define this notion in its most general form describe several approaches to identify boundary classes and apply them to various graph problems

blind equalization of digital communication channels using high order moments the authors describe algorithms for blind equalization of digital communication channels of the quadrature amplitude modulation qam type these algorithms are based on the fourth order statistical moments of the received data sequence the first of the two is a linear least squares type algorithm the second algorithm is of the nonlinear least squares type the algorithms use the fourth order statistical moments of the symbol sequence to explicitly estimate the channel impulse response the estimated impulse response is used in turn to construct a linear mean square error equalizer the performance of this equalizer is not optimal in any sense but it is adequate for channels with mild intersymbol interference or when the number of data points available for estimating the channel response is very large

least squares quantization in pcm it has long been realized that in pulse code modulation pcm with a given ensemble of signals to handle the quantum values should be spaced more closely in the voltage regions where the signal amplitude is more likely to fall it has been shown by panter and dite that in the limit as the number of quanta becomes infinite the asymptotic fractional density of quanta per unit voltage should vary as the one third power of the probability density per unit voltage of signal amplitudes in this paper the corresponding result for any finite number of quanta is derived that is necessary conditions are found that the quanta and associated quantization intervals of an optimum finite quantization scheme must satisfy the optimization criterion used is that the average quantization noise power be a minimum it is shown that the result obtained here goes over into the panter and dite result as the number of quanta become large the optimum quautization schemes for 2 b quanta b 1 2 cdots 7 are given numerically for gaussian and for laplacian distribution of signal amplitudes

k means clustering based data detection and symbol timing recovery for burst mode optical receiver burst mode receivers are key components of optical transmission systems including passive optical networks and have received much attention in recent years we present new efficient methods for burst optical signal detection in burst mode data transmission using a modified k means clustering technique we also develop a data aided feedforward symbol timing recovery method based on a polynomial interpolation and maximum likelihood estimation theory a performance criterion considering the error caused by the interpolation approximation is derived for this method the proposed detection and timing recovery approaches can be implemented effectively and rapidly therefore they are very suitable for burst mode receivers we also provide some numerical examples to demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods

hybrid tractability of valued constraint problems the constraint satisfaction problem csp is a central generic problem in computer science and artificial intelligence it provides a common framework for many theoretical problems as well as for many real life applications valued constraint problems are a generalisation of the csp which allow the user to model optimisation problems considerable effort has been made in identifying properties which ensure tractability in such problems in this work we initiate the study of hybrid tractability of valued constraint problems that is properties which guarantee tractability of the given valued constraint problem but which do not depend only on the underlying structure of the instance such as being tree structured or only on the types of valued constraints in the instance such as submodularity we present several novel hybrid classes of valued constraint problems in which all unary constraints are allowed which include a machine scheduling problem constraint problems of arbitrary arities with no overlapping nogoods and the softalldiff constraint with arbitrary unary valued constraints an important tool in our investigation will be the notion of forbidden substructures

message passing algorithms for counting short cycles in a graph a message passing algorithm for counting short cycles in a graph is presented for bipartite graphs which are of particular interest in coding the algorithm is capable of counting cycles of length g g 2 2g 2 where g is the girth of the graph for a general non bipartite graph cycles of length g g 1 2g 1 can be counted the algorithm is based on performing integer additions and subtractions in the nodes of the graph and passing extrinsic messages to adjacent nodes the complexity of the proposed algorithm grows as o g e 2 where e is the number of edges in the graph for sparse graphs the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the existing algorithms tailored for counting em short cycles in terms of computational complexity and memory requirements we also discuss a more generic and basic approach of counting short cycles which is based on matrix multiplication and provide a message passing interpretation for such an approach we then demonstrate that an efficient implementation of the matrix multiplication approach has essentially the same complexity as the proposed message passing algorithm

cluster based blind nonlinear channel estimation a cluster based maximum likelihood sequence estimator mlse for nonlinear channels was described which consists of a clustering network and an mlse implemented by the viterbi algorithm the cluster based mlse can be used for digital communication through nonlinear finite length channels because channel mapping estimation is used instead of channel estimation in the conventional mlse the clustering network of the cluster based mlse which estimates the channel mapping between the signal input vectors and the noiseless channel outputs is a supervised network and requires a training sequence we propose a blind channel mapping estimator to estimate the channel mapping without using the training sequence the blind channel mapping estimator has a clustering block and a mapping block the clustering block estimates the channel outputs which represent the channel mapping subject to an unknown permutation operation because no training sequence is utilized that permutation operation is resolved by the mapping block and therefore the channel mapping is obtained introducing the blind channel mapping estimator into the cluster based mlse a blind cluster based mlse for nonlinear channels can be done computer simulations of the blind channel mapping estimator and the blind mlse for nonlinear channels are presented

the strong perfect graph theorem a graph g is perfect if for every induced subgraph h the chromatic number of h equals the size of the largest complete subgraph of h and g is berge if no induced subgraph of g is an odd cycle of length at least five or the complement of one the strong perfect graph conjecture berge 1961 asserts that a graph is perfect if and only if it is berge a stronger conjecture was made recently by conforti cornu ejols and vuiskovi c that every berge graph either falls into one of a few basic classes or admits one of a few kinds of separation designed so that a minimum counterexample to berge s conjecture cannot have either of these properties in this paper we prove both of these conjectures

ruelle zeta functions for finite digraphs abstract three types of expressions for combinatorial zeta functions are considered we investigate conditions for reformulating the exponential expression to the euler product expression and the euler product expression to the determinant expression of hashimoto type the existence of the determinant expression of hashimoto type enables one to unify those zetas within a single framework that is the ruelle zeta functions for quasi finite dynamical systems constructed on finite digraphs which we call the combinatorial zeta functions

characterizing and bounding the imperfection ratio for some classes of graphs perfect graphs constitute a well studied graph class with a rich structure which is reflected by many characterizations with respect to different concepts perfect graphs are for instance precisely those graphs g where the stable set polytope stab g equals the fractional stable set polytope qstab g the dilation ratio rm min t rm qstab g subseteq t rm stab g of the two polytopes yields the imperfection ratio of g it is np hard to compute and for most graph classes it is even unknown whether it is bounded for graphs g such that all facets of stab g are rank constraints associated with antiwebs we characterize the imperfection ratio and bound it by 3 2 outgoing from this result we characterize and bound the imperfection ratio for several graph classes including near bipartite graphs and their complements namely quasi line graphs by means of induced antiwebs and webs respectively

packing and covering with linear programming a survey this paper considers the polyhedral results and the min max results on packing and covering problems of the decade since the strong perfect graph theorem published in 2006 the main such results are available for the packing problem however there are still important polyhedral questions that remain open for the covering problem the main questions are still open although there has been important progress we survey some of the main results with emphasis on those where linear programming and graph theory come together they mainly concern the covering of cycles or dicycles in graphs or signed graphs either with vertices or edges this includes the multicut and integral multiflow problems

on the switch markov chain for perfect matchings we study a simple markov chain the switch chain on the set of all perfect matchings in a bipartite graph this markov chain was proposed by diaconis graham and holmes as a possible approach to a sampling problem arising in statistics we ask for which hereditary classes of graphs is the markov chain ergodic and for which is it rapidly mixing we provide a precise answer to the ergodicity question and close bounds on the mixing question we show for the first time that the mixing time of the switch chain is polynomial in the case of monotone graphs a class that includes examples of interest in the statistical setting

list matrix partitions of chordal graphs it is well known that a clique with k 1 vertices is the only minimal obstruction to k colourability of chordal graphs a similar result is known for the existence of a cover by l cliques both of these problems are in fact partition problems restricted to chordal graphs the first seeks partitions into k independent sets and the second is equivalent to finding partitions into l cliques in an earlier paper we proved that a chordal graph can be partitioned into k independent sets and l cliques if and only if it does not contain an induced disjoint union of l 1 cliques of size k 1 a linear time algorithm for finding such partitions can be derived from the proof in this paper we expand our focus and consider more general partitions of chordal graphs for each symmetric matrix m over 0 1 the m partition problem seeks a partition of the input graph into independent sets cliques or arbitrary sets with certain pairs of sets being required to have no edges or to have all edges joining them as encoded in the matrix m moreover the vertices of the input chordal graph can be equipped with lists restricting the parts to which a vertex can be placed such list partitions generalize list colourings and list homomorphisms and arise frequently in the theory of graph perfection we show that many m partition problems that are np complete in general become solvable in polynomial time for chordal graphs even in the presence of lists on the other hand we show that there are m partition problems without lists that remain np complete for chordal graphs it is not known whether or not each list m partition problem is np complete or polynomial but it has been shown that each is np complete or quasi polynomial no log n for chordal graphs even this quasi dichotomy is not known but we do identify large families of matrices m for which dichotomy or at least quasi dichotomy holds we also discuss forbidden subgraph characterizations of graphs admitting an m partition such characterizations have recently been investigated for partitions of perfect graphs and we focus on highlighting the improvements one can obtain for the class of chordal rather than just perfect graphs

semitotal domination new hardness results and a polynomial time algorithm for graphs of bounded mim width abstract a semitotal dominating set of a graph g with no isolated vertex is a dominating set d of g such that every vertex in d is within distance two of another vertex in d the minimum size t 2 g of a semitotal dominating set of g is squeezed between the domination number g and the total domination number t g semitotal dominating set is the problem of finding given a graph g a semitotal dominating set of g of size t 2 g in this paper we continue the systematic study on the computational complexity of this problem when restricted to special graph classes in particular we show that it is solvable in polynomial time for the class of graphs of bounded mim width by a reduction to total dominating set and we provide several approximation lower bounds for subclasses of subcubic graphs moreover we obtain complexity dichotomies in monogenic classes for the decision versions of semitotal dominating set and total dominating set finally we show that it is np complete to recognise the graphs such that t 2 g t g and those such that g t 2 g even if restricted to be planar and with maximum degree at most 4 and we provide forbidden induced subgraph characterisations for the graphs hereditarily satisfying either of these two equalities

propagation of _ smoothness for solutions of the euler equation the motion of an ideal incompressible fluid is described by a system of partial differential equations known as the euler equation considering the initial value problem for this equation we prove that in a classical solution the lq regularity of the data propagates along the fluid lines our method consists of combining properties of the e approximate solution with lq energy estimates and simple results of classical singular integral operators in particular for the two dimensional case we present an elementary proof

parameterized complexity of vertex deletion into perfect graph classes vertex deletion problems are at the heart of parameterized complexity for a graph class f the f deletion problem takes as input a graph g and an integer k the question is whether it is possible to delete at most k vertices from g such that the resulting graph belongs to f whether perfect deletion is fixed parameter tractable and whether chordal deletion admits a polynomial kernel when parameterized by k have been stated as open questions in previous work we show that perfect deletion and weakly chordal deletion are w 2 hard when parameterized by k in search of positive results we study a restricted variant of the f deletion problem in this restricted variant the deleted vertices must be taken from a specified set x and we parameterize by x we show that for perfect deletion and weakly chordal deletion although this restriction immediately ensures fixed parameter tractability it is not enough to yield polynomial kernels unless np conp poly on the positive side for chordal deletion the restriction enables us to obtain a kernel with o x 4 vertices

channel dependent constrained combinatorial clustering constrained combinatorial clustering ccc is a new approach for grouping multiple features where the clustering metric depends on an unknown communication channel assignment features assigned to the same channel cannot be from the same source and conversely channels assigned to the same source must be distinct while the number of sources and their states are unknown the channels are assumed to be known except for additive noise potential clustering assignments are checked for compatibility with the constraints in a structured way that results in significant computational savings with respect to exhaustive enumeration especially when combined with a k best channel assignment algorithm that has polynomial complexity by combining two channel assignment methods exhaustive and k best with two clustering techniques ccc and greedy four new algorithms are presented to solve this novel problem along with detailed computational complexity analyses the main algorithm ccc is a top down clustering strategy based on assignment aggregation in a channel constrained environment the approaches are compared on a one dimensional simulation significant performance differences in source estimation accuracy and estimated number of sources are observed at low signal to noise ratios snrs and for low values of k some novel permutation symmetry properties arising from the study which lead to a new type of self affine set or discrete fractal are also presented

progress on perfect graphs a graph is perfect if for every induced subgraph the chromatic number is equal to the maximum size of a complete subgraph the class of perfect graphs is important for several reasons for instance many problems of interest in practice but intractable in general can be solved efficiently when restricted to the class of perfect graphs also the question of when a certain class of linear programs always have an integer solution can be answered in terms of perfection of an associated graph

perfectness is an elusive graph property a graph property is called elusive or evasive if every algorithm for testing this property has to read in the worst case n choose 2 entries of the adjacency matrix of the given graph several graph properties have been shown to be elusive e g planarity or k colorability a famous conjecture of karp says that every nontrivial monotone graph property is elusive we prove that a nonmonotone but hereditary graph property is elusive perfectness

on the complexity of 4 coloring graphs without long induced paths we show that deciding if a graph without induced paths on nine vertices can be colored with 4 colors is an np complete problem improving a previous np completeness result proved by woeginger and sgall in 2001 the complexity of 4 coloring graphs without induced paths on five vertices remains open we show that deciding if a graph without induced paths or cycles on five vertices can be colored with 4 colors can be done in polynomial time a step in our algorithm uses the well known and deep fact due to grotschel lovasz and schrijver stating that perfect graphs can be optimally colored in polynomial time

regular inference as vertex coloring abstract this paper is concerned with the problem of supervised learning of deterministic finite state automata in the technical sense of identification in the limit from complete data by finding a minimal dfa consistent with a sample we solve this problem by translating it in its entirety to a vertex coloring problem essentially such a problem consists of two types of constraints that restrict the hypothesis space inequivalence and equivalence constraints the inequivalence constraints translate to the vertex coloring problem in a very natural way the equivalence constraints however greatly complicate the translation to vertex coloring in previous coloring based translations these were therefore encoded either dynamically by modifying the vertex coloring instance on the fly or by encoding them as satisfiability problems we provide the first translation that encodes both types of constraints together in a pure vertex coloring instance and prove the correctness of the construction the coloring approach offers many opportunities for applying insights from combinatorial optimization and graph theory to regular inference we immediately obtain new complexity bounds as well as a family of new learning algorithms which can be used to obtain exact hypotheses as well as fast approximations we also demonstrate that satisfying all inequivalence constraints in regular inference and vertex coloring are in some sense equally hard this immediately implies that regular inference is not approximable within s 1 s being the cardinality of the sample for any 1 2 unless p np it also indicates that solving only for inequivalence constraints is easier than the full regular inference problem

boundary properties of graphs for algorithmic graph problems the notion of a boundary graph property was recently introduced as a relaxation of that of a minimal property and was applied to several problems of both algorithmic and combinatorial nature in the present paper we first survey recent results related to this notion and then apply it to two algorithmic graph problems hamiltonian cycle and vertexk colorability in particular we discover the first two boundary classes for the hamiltonian cycle problem and prove that for any k 3 there is a continuum of boundary classes for vertexk colorability

the linear guessing number of undirected graphs abstract this paper investigates linear guessing number introduced by riis in connection with the network coding theory this paper establishes properties of linear guessing number on undirected graphs in particular lower and upper bounds for linear guessing number are established finally linear guessing numbers of product graphs are investigated

structural investigation of piecewise linearized network flow problems in this work we study polyhedra in the context of network flow problems in which the flow value on each arc lies in one of several predefined intervals this is motivated by nonlinear problems on transportation networks where nonlinearities are handled by piecewise linear approximation or relaxation a common and established approach in many applications several methods for modeling piecewise linear functions which provide a complete description for a single network arc are known however in general this property is lost when considering multiple arcs we show how to strengthen the formulation for specific substructures consisting of multiple arcs by linear inequalities for the case of paths of degree two nodes we give a complete description of the polyhedron projected to the integer variables our model is based on but not limited to the connection between binary variables and flow variables that is used in the multiple choice method or the convex combination method we also show how to transfe

new processing techniques based on the constant modulus adaptive algorithm this paper presents three extensions of the constant modulus algorithm cma introduced in an earlier paper as a means of correcting degradations in constant enyelope waveforms as originally formulated the cma employs an fir filter with complex coefficients and accepts complex quadrature input data in this paper first a real input real coefficient version of the algorithm is shown to perform arbitrarily close to the fully complex version secondly the algorithm is extended for the enhancement of signals having a nonconstant but known envelope as might arise in data signals with pulse shaping lastly a multichannel version of cma wherein several observations are linearly combined is presented for joint adaptation of multiple filters this approach can be used for example as a means of spatial or polarization beamsteering to reject additive interferers and compensate for channel induced polarization rotation

cycle transversals in perfect graphs and cographs a cycle transversal or feedback vertex set of a graph g is a subset t v g such that t v c 0 for every cycle c of g this work considers the problem of finding special cycle transversals in perfect graphs and cographs we prove that finding a minimum cycle transversal t in a perfect graph g is np hard even for bipartite graphs with maximum degree four since g t is acyclic this result implies that finding a maximum acyclic induced subgraph of a perfect graph is also np hard other special properties of t are considered a clique stable respectively cycle transversal or simply cct sct respectively is a cycle transversal which is a clique stable set respectively recognizing graphs which admit a cct can be done in polynomial time however no structural characterization of such graphs is known even for perfect graphs we characterize cographs with cct in terms of forbidden induced subgraphs and describe their structure this leads to linear time recognition of cographs with cct we also prove that deciding whether a perfect graph admits an sct is np complete we characterize cographs with sct in terms of forbidden induced subgraphs this characterization also leads to linear time recognition

fixed parameter algorithms for cochromatic number and disjoint rectangle stabbing via iterative localization given a permutation p of 1 n and a positive integer k can p be partitioned into at most k subsequences each of which is either increasing or decreasing we give an algorithm with running time 2 o k 2 l o g k n o 1 that solves this problem thereby showing that it is fixed parameter tractable this np complete problem is equivalent to deciding whether the cochromatic number of a given permutation graph on n vertices is at most k our algorithm solves in fact a more general problem within the mentioned running time it decides whether the cochromatic number of a given perfect graph on n vertices is at most k to obtain our result we use a combination of two well known techniques within parameterized algorithms iterative compression and greedy localization consequently we name this combination iterative localization we further demonstrate the power of this combination by giving an algorithm with running time 2 o k 2 l o g k nlogn that decides whether a given set of n non overlapping axis parallel rectangles can be stabbed by at most k of a given set of horizontal and vertical lines

reconfiguration of colorable sets in classes of perfect graphs abstract a set of vertices in a graph is c colorable if the subgraph induced by the set has a proper c coloring in this paper we study the problem of finding a step by step transformation called a reconfiguration sequence between two c colorable sets in the same graph this problem generalizes the well studied independent set reconfiguration problem as the first step toward a systematic understanding of the complexity of this general problem we study the problem on classes of perfect graphs we first focus on interval graphs and give a combinatorial characterization of the distance between two c colorable sets this gives a linear time algorithm for finding an actual shortest reconfiguration sequence for interval graphs since interval graphs are exactly the graphs that are simultaneously chordal and co comparability we then complement the positive result by showing that even deciding reachability is pspace complete for chordal graphs and for co comparability graphs the hardness for chordal graphs holds even for split graphs we also consider the case where c is a fixed constant and show that in such a case the reachability problem is polynomial time solvable for split graphs but still pspace complete for co comparability graphs the complexity of this case for chordal graphs remains unsettled as by products our positive results give the first polynomial time solvable cases split graphs and interval graphs for feedback vertex set reconfiguration

zeta functions of finite graphs and coverings iii abstract a graph theoretical analog of brauer siegel theory for zeta functions of number fields is developed using the theory of artin l functions for galois coverings of graphs from parts i and ii in the process we discuss possible versions of the riemann hypothesis for the ihara zeta function of an irregular graph

error correction for index coding with side information a problem of index coding with side information was first considered by birk and kol in 1998 in this study a generalization of index coding scheme where transmitted symbols are subject to errors is studied error correcting methods for such a scheme and their parameters are investigated in particular the following question is discussed given the side information hypergraph of index coding scheme and the maximal number of erroneous symbols what is the shortest length of a linear index code such that every receiver is able to recover the required information this question turns out to be a generalization of the problem of finding a shortest length error correcting code with a prescribed error correcting capability in the classical coding theory the singleton bound and two other bounds referred to as the bound and the bound for the optimal length of a linear error correcting index code ecic are established for large alphabets a construction based on concatenation of an optimal index code with a maximum distance separable classical code is shown to attain the singleton bound for smaller alphabets however this construction may not be optimal a random construction is also analyzed it yields another inexplicit bound on the length of an optimal linear ecic further the problem of error correcting decoding by a linear ecic is studied it is shown that in order to decode correctly the desired symbol the decoder is required to find one of the vectors belonging to an affine space containing the actual error vector the syndrome decoding is shown to produce the correct output if the weight of the error pattern is less or equal to the error correcting capability of the corresponding ecic finally the notion of static ecic which is suitable for use with a family of instances of an index coding problem is introduced several bounds on the length of static ecics are derived and constructions for static ecics are discussed connections of these codes to weakly resilient boolean functions are established

neural gas network for vector quantization and its application to time series prediction a neural network algorithm based on a soft max adaptation rule is presented this algorithm exhibits good performance in reaching the optimum minimization of a cost function for vector quantization data compression the soft max rule employed is an extension of the standard k means clustering procedure and takes into account a neighborhood ranking of the reference weight vectors it is shown that the dynamics of the reference weight vectors during the input driven adaptation procedure are determined by the gradient of an energy function whose shape can be modulated through a neighborhood determining parameter and resemble the dynamics of brownian particles moving in a potential determined by the data point density the network is used to represent the attractor of the mackey glass equation and to predict the mackey glass time series with additional local linear mappings for generating output values the results obtained for the time series prediction compare favorably with the results achieved by backpropagation and radial basis function networks

which graphs are determined by their spectrum for almost all graphs the answer to the question in the title is still unknown here we survey the cases for which the answer is known not only the adjacency matrix but also other types of matrices such as the laplacian matrix are considered

lovasz schrijver sdp operator near perfect graphs and near bipartite graphs we study the lovasz schrijver lift and project operator mathrm text ls ls based on the cone of symmetric positive semidefinite matrices applied to the fractional stable set polytope of graphs the problem of obtaining a combinatorial characterization of graphs for which the mathrm text ls ls operator generates the stable set polytope in one step has been open since 1990 we call these graphs mathrm text ls ls perfect in the current contribution we pursue a full combinatorial characterization of mathrm text ls ls perfect graphs and make progress towards such a characterization by establishing a new close relationship among mathrm text ls ls perfect graphs near bipartite graphs and a newly introduced concept of full support perfect graphs

contraction and deletion blockers for perfect graphs and h free graphs abstract we study the following problem for given integers d k and graph g can we reduce some fixed graph parameter of g by at least d via at most k graph operations from some fixed set s as parameters we take the chromatic number clique number and independence number and as operations we choose edge contraction ec and vertex deletion vd we determine the complexity of this problem for s ec and s vd and for a number of subclasses of perfect graphs we use these results to determine the complexity of the problem for s ec and s vd and restricted to h free graphs

colorings of hypergraphs perfect graphs and associated primes of powers of monomial ideals abstract there is a natural one to one correspondence between squarefree monomial ideals and finite simple hypergraphs via the cover ideal construction let h be a finite simple hypergraph and let j j h be its cover ideal in a polynomial ring r we give an explicit description of all associated primes of r j s for any power j s of j in terms of the coloring properties of hypergraphs arising from h we also give an algebraic method for determining the chromatic number of h proving that it is equivalent to a monomial ideal membership problem involving powers of j our work yields two new purely algebraic characterizations of perfect graphs independent of the strong perfect graph theorem the first characterization is in terms of the sets ass r j s while the second characterization is in terms of the saturated chain condition for associated primes

permanents pfaffian orientations and even directed circuits given a 0 1 square matrix a when can some of the 1 s be changed toi1 s in such a way that the permanent of a equals the determinant of the modifled matrix when does a real square matrix have the property that every real matrix with the same sign pattern that is the corresponding entries either have the same sign or are both zero is nonsingular when is a hypergraph with n vertices and n hyperedges minimally nonbipartite when does a bipartite graph have a pfa an orientation given a digraph does it have no directed circuit of even length given a digraph does it have a subdivision with no even directed circuit it is known that all of the above problems are equivalent we prove a structural characterization of the feasible instances which implies a polynomial time algorithm to solve all of the above problems the structural characterization says roughly speaking that a bipartite graph has a pfa an orientation if and only if it can be obtained by piecing together in a specifled way planar bipartite graphs and one sporadic nonplanar bipartite graph

on algorithms for p 5 gem free graphs a graph is p5 gem free when it does not contain p5 an induced path with five vertices or a gem a graph formed by making an universal vertex adjacent to each of the four vertices of the induced path p4 as an induced subgraph we present o n2 time recognition algorithms for chordal gem free graphs and for p5 gem free graphs using a characterization of p5 gem free graphs by their prime graphs with respect to modular decomposition and their modular decomposition trees a brandstadt d kratsch on the structure of p5 gem free graphs discrete appl math 145 2005 155 166 we give linear time algorithms for the following np complete problems on p5 gem free graphs minimum coloring maximum weight stable set maximum weight clique and minimum clique cover