Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2007

DOI

10.1016/j.tcs.2006.10.024

Publication Title

Theoretical Computer Science

Volume

370

Issue

1-3

Pages

74-93

Abstract

The substitution composition of two disjoint graphs G1 and G2 is obtained by first removing a vertex x from G2 and then making every vertex in G1 adjacent to all neighbours of x in G2. Let F be a family of graphs defined by a set Z* of forbidden configurations. Giakoumakis [V. Giakoumakis, On the closure of graphs under substitution, Discrete Mathematics 177 (1997) 83–97] proved that F∗, the closure under substitution of F, can be characterized by a set Z∗ of forbidden configurations — the minimal prime extensions of Z. He also showed that Z∗ is not necessarily a finite set. Since substitution preserves many of the properties of the composed graphs, an important problem is the following: find necessary and sufficient conditions for the finiteness of Z∗. Giakoumakis [V. Giakoumakis, On the closure of graphs under substitution, Discrete Mathematics 177 (1997) 83–97] presented a sufficient condition for the finiteness of Z∗ and a simple method for enumerating all its elements. Since then, many other researchers have studied various classes of graphs for which the substitution closure can be characterized by a finite set of forbidden configurations.

The main contribution of this paper is to completely solve the above problem by characterizing all classes of graphs having a finite number of minimal prime extensions. We then go on to point out a simple way for generating an infinite number of minimal prime extensions for all the other classes of F∗.

Comments

Web of Science: "Free full-text from publisher -- Elsevier open archive."

Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Original Publication Citation

Giakoumakis, V., & Olariu, S. (2007). All minimal prime extensions of hereditary classes of graphs. Theoretical Computer Science, 370(1-3), 74-93. doi:10.1016/j.tcs.2006.10.024

ORCID

0000-0002-3776-216X (Olariu)

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