Volume 79, Issue 4 p. 282-299
Original Article

Linear-Time Algorithms for Scattering Number and Hamilton-Connectivity of Interval Graphs

Hajo Broersma,

Hajo Broersma

FACULTY OF EEMCS, UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE, ENSCHEDE, THE NETHERLANDS

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Jiří Fiala,

Jiří Fiala

DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED MATHEMATICS, CHARLES UNIVERSITY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

Contract grant sponsor: GraDR-EuroGIGA project GIG/11/E023 and by the project Kontakt LH12095 (to J.F.)

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Petr A. Golovach,

Petr A. Golovach

INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN, BERGEN, NORWAY

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Tomáš Kaiser,

Tomáš Kaiser

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS, INSTITUTE FOR THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE (CE-ITI) AND THE EUROPEAN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE NTIS (NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE INFORMATION SOCIETY), UNIVERSITY OF WEST BOHEMIA, PLZEŇ, CZECH REPUBLIC

Contract grant sponsor:Project P202/12/G061 of the Czech Science Foundation (to T.K.)

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Daniël Paulusma,

Daniël Paulusma

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING SCIENCES, DURHAM UNIVERSITY, UNITED KINGDOM

Contract grant sponsor: EPSRC (EP/G043434/1)(to D.P.),

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Andrzej Proskurowski,

Andrzej Proskurowski

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON, EUGENE, OR, 97403

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First published: 28 October 2014
Citations: 17

Contract grant sponsor: Royal Society Joint Project Grant JP090172. An extended abstract of it appeared in the Proceedings of WG 2013 [ 2013];

Abstract

We prove that for all urn:x-wiley:03649024:media:jgt21832:jgt21832-math-0001 an interval graph is urn:x-wiley:03649024:media:jgt21832:jgt21832-math-0002-Hamilton-connected if and only if its scattering number is at most k. This complements a previously known fact that an interval graph has a nonnegative scattering number if and only if it contains a Hamilton cycle, as well as a characterization of interval graphs with positive scattering numbers in terms of the minimum size of a path cover. We also give an urn:x-wiley:03649024:media:jgt21832:jgt21832-math-0003 time algorithm for computing the scattering number of an interval graph with n vertices and m edges, which improves the previously best-known urn:x-wiley:03649024:media:jgt21832:jgt21832-math-0004 time bound for solving this problem. As a consequence of our two results, the maximum k for which an interval graph is k-Hamilton-connected can be computed in urn:x-wiley:03649024:media:jgt21832:jgt21832-math-0005 time.

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