P5-free augmenting graphs and the maximum stable set problem

Augmenting chains in graphs without a skew star

The augmenting chain technique has been applied to solve the maximum stable set problem in the class of line graphs (which coincides with the maximum matching problem) and then has been extended to the class of claw-free graphs. In the present paper, we propose a further generalization of this approach. Specifically, we show how to find an augmenting chain in graphs containing no skew star, i.e...

Finding augmenting chains in extensions of claw-free graphs

Finding augmenting chains is in the heart of the maximum matching problem, which is equivalent to the maximum stable set problem in the class of line graphs. Due to the celebrated result of Edmonds, augmenting chains can be found in line graphs in polynomial time. Minty and Sbihi generalized this result to claw-free graphs. In this paper we extend it to larger classes. As a particular consequen...

An augmenting graph approach to the stable set problem in P5-free graphs

New Applications of Clique Separator Decomposition for the Maximum Weight Stable Set Problem

Graph decompositions such as decomposition by clique separators and modular decomposition are of crucial importance for designing efficient graph algorithms. Clique separators in graphs were used by Tarjan as a divide-and-conquer approach for solving various problems such as the Maximum Weight Stable Set (MWS) problem, Colouring and Minimum Fill-in. The basic tool is a decomposition tree of the...

Stable sets for (P6, K2, 3)-free graphs

The Maximum Stable Set (MS) problem is a well known NP-hard problem. However different graph classes for which MS can be efficiently solved have been detected and the augmenting graph technique seems to be a fruitful tool to this aim. In this paper we apply a recent characterization of minimal augmenting graphs [22] to prove that MS can be solved for (P6,K2,3)-free graphs in polynomial time, ex...