Recognizing unit multiple intervals is hard

TL;DR

This paper proves that recognizing unit 2-interval graphs is NP-complete and extends this complexity result to all unit d-interval graphs for d≥2, resolving an open problem in graph recognition.

Contribution

It establishes the NP-completeness of recognizing unit 2-interval graphs and generalizes this to all unit d-interval graphs for d≥2 using a novel proof approach.

Findings

Recognition of unit 2-interval graphs is NP-complete.

NP-completeness extends to all unit d-interval graphs for d≥2.

Implications for recognizing certain classes of d-interval graphs.

Abstract

Multiple interval graphs are a well-known generalization of interval graphs introduced in the 1970s to deal with situations arising naturally in scheduling and allocation. A $d$-interval is the union of $d$ intervals on the real line, and a graph is a $d$-interval graph if it is the intersection graph of $d$-intervals. In particular, it is a unit $d$-interval graph if it admits a $d$-interval representation where every interval has unit length. Whereas it has been known for a long time that recognizing 2-interval graphs and other related classes such as 2-track interval graphs is NP-complete, the complexity of recognizing unit 2-interval graphs remains open. Here, we settle this question by proving that the recognition of unit 2-interval graphs is also NP-complete. Our proof technique uses a completely different approach from the other hardness results of recognizing related classes. Furthermore, we extend the result for unit $d$-interval graphs for any $d\geq 2$, which does not follow directly in graph recognition problems --as an example, it took almost 20 years to close the gap between $d=2$ and $d> 2$ for the recognition of $d$-track interval graphs. Our result has several implications, including that recognizing $(x, \dots, x)$ $d$-interval graphs and depth $r$ unit 2-interval graphs is NP-complete for every $x\geq 11$ and every $r\geq 4$.