Cycles and p-competition graphs

Abstract

The notion of p-competition graphs of digraphs was introduced by S-R. Kim, T. A. McKee, F. R. McMorris, and F. S. Roberts [p-competition graphs, Linear Algebra Appl., 217 (1995) 167--178] as a generalization of the competition graphs of digraphs. Let p be a positive integer. The p-competition graph C_p(D) of a digraph D=(V,A) is a (simple undirected) graph which has the same vertex set V and has an edge between distinct vertices x and y if and only if there exist p distinct vertices v_1, ..., v_p in V such that (x,v_i), (y,v_i) are arcs of the digraph D for each i=1, ..., p. In this paper, given a cycle of length n, we compute exact values of p in terms of n such that it is a p-competition graph, which generalizes the results obtained by Kim et al. We also find values of p in terms of n so that its complement is a p-competition graph.