Boxicity of Circular Arc Graphs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the boxicity of circular arc graphs, establishing bounds based on maximum degree, arc intersection properties, and circular cover numbers, thereby advancing understanding of their geometric representations.

Contribution

It provides new bounds on the boxicity of circular arc graphs related to degree, arc intersection, and cover number, with tightness results and specific conditions for low boxicity.

Findings

If maximum degree $ riangle < rac{n(eta-1)}{2eta}$, then boxicity $oxed{eta}$.

For any circular arc graph, boxicity $oxed{ ext{bounded by } r_{inf} + 1}$, which is tight.

If maximum circular cover number $L_{max}(G) > 4$, then boxicity $oxed{ ext{at most } 3}$.

Abstract

A $k$-dimensional box is the cartesian product $R_1 \times R_2 \times ... \times R_k$ where each $R_i$ is a closed interval on the real line. The {\it boxicity} of a graph $G$, denoted as $box(G)$, is the minimum integer $k$ such that $G$ can be represented as the intersection graph of a collection of $k$-dimensional boxes: that is two vertices are adjacent if and only if their corresponding boxes intersect. A circular arc graph is a graph that can be represented as the intersection graph of arcs on a circle. Let $G$ be a circular arc graph with maximum degree $\Delta$. We show that if $\Delta <\lfloor \frac{n(\alpha-1)}{2\alpha}\rfloor$, $\alpha \in \mathbb{N}$, $\alpha \geq 2$ then $box(G) \leq \alpha$. We also demonstrate a graph with boxicity $> \alpha$ but with $\Delta=n\frac{(\alpha-1)}{2\alpha}+\frac{n}{2\alpha(\alpha+1)}+(\alpha+2)$. So the result cannot be improved substantially when $\alpha$ is large. Let $r_{inf}$ be minimum number of arcs passing through any point on the circle with respect to some circular arc representation of $G$. We also show that for any circular arc graph $G$, $box(G) \leq r_{inf} + 1$ and this bound is tight. Given a family of arcs $F$ on the circle, the circular cover number $L(F)$ is the cardinality of the smallest subset $F'$ of $F$ such that the arcs in $F'$ can cover the circle. Maximum circular cover number $L_{max}(G)$ is defined as the maximum value of $L(F)$ obtained over all possible family of arcs $F$ that can represent $G$. We will show that if $G$ is a circular arc graph with $L_{max}(G)> 4$ then $box(G) \leq 3$.