Graph Transformation with Focus on Incident Edges

We tackle the problem of graph transformation with particular focus on node cloning. We propose a new approach to graph rewriting, called polarized node cloning, where a node may be cloned together with either all its incident edges or with only its outgoing edges or with only its incoming edges or with none of its incident edges. We thus subsume previous works such as the sesqui-pushout, the heterogeneous pushout and the adaptive star grammars approaches. We first define polarized node cloning algorithmically, then we propose an algebraic definition. We use polarization annotations to declare how a node must be cloned. For this purpose, we introduce the notion of polarized graphs as graphs endowed with some annotations on nodes and we define graph transformations with polarized node cloning by means of sesqui-pushouts in the category of polarized graphs.