Characterization and recognition of some opposition and coalition graph classes

Abstract

A graph is an opposition graph, respectively, a coalition graph, if it admits an acyclic orientation which puts the two end-edges of every chordless 4-vertex path in opposition, respectively, in the same direction. Opposition and coalition graphs have been introduced and investigated in connection to perfect graphs. Recognizing and characterizing opposition and coalition graphs are long-standing open problems. This paper gives characterizations for opposition graphs and coalition graphs on some restricted graph classes. Implicit in our arguments are polynomial time recognition algorithms for these graphs. We also give a good characterization for the so-called generalized opposition graphs.