A Convexity Lemma and Expansion Procedures for Bipartite Graphs

A hierarchy of classes of graphs is proposed which includes hypercubes, acyclic cubical complexes, median graphs, almost-median graphs, semi-median graphs and partial cubes. Structural properties of these classes are derived and used for the characterization of these classes by expansion procedures, for a characterization of semi-median graphs by metrically defined relations on the edge set of a graph and for a characterization of median graphs by forbidden subgraphs. Moreover, a convexity lemma is proved and used to derive a simple algorithm of complexity O(mn) for recognizing median graphs.