Compact Representation of Semilinear and Terrain-like Graphs

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Main Authors: Cardinal, Jean, Yuditsky, Yelena
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Cardinal, Jean
Yuditsky, Yelena
author_facet Cardinal, Jean
Yuditsky, Yelena
contents We consider the existence and construction of \textit{biclique covers} of graphs, consisting of coverings of their edge sets by complete bipartite graphs. The \textit{size} of such a cover is the sum of the sizes of the bicliques. Small-size biclique covers of graphs are ubiquitous in computational geometry, and have been shown to be useful compact representations of graphs. We give a brief survey of classical and recent results on biclique covers and their applications, and give new families of graphs having biclique covers of near-linear size. In particular, we show that semilinear graphs, whose edges are defined by linear relations in bounded dimensional space, always have biclique covers of size $O(n\polylog n)$. This generalizes many previously known results on special classes of graphs including interval graphs, permutation graphs, and graphs of bounded boxicity, but also new classes such as intersection graphs of L-shapes in the plane. It also directly implies the bounds for Zarankiewicz's problem derived by Basit, Chernikov, Starchenko, Tao, and Tran (\textit{Forum Math. Sigma}, 2021). We also consider capped graphs, also known as terrain-like graphs, defined as ordered graphs forbidding a certain ordered pattern on four vertices. Terrain-like graphs contain the induced subgraphs of terrain visibility graphs. We give an elementary proof that these graphs admit biclique partitions of size $O(n\log^3 n)$. This provides a simple combinatorial analogue of a classical result from Agarwal, Alon, Aronov, and Suri on polygon visibility graphs (\textit{Discrete Comput. Geom.} 1994). Finally, we prove that there exists families of unit disk graphs on $n$ vertices that do not admit biclique coverings of size $o(n^{4/3})$, showing that we are unlikely to improve on Szemerédi-Trotter type incidence bounds for higher-degree semialgebraic graphs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_00252
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Compact Representation of Semilinear and Terrain-like Graphs
Cardinal, Jean
Yuditsky, Yelena
Combinatorics
Computational Geometry
Discrete Mathematics
05C75, 05C85
G.2.2; F.2.2
We consider the existence and construction of \textit{biclique covers} of graphs, consisting of coverings of their edge sets by complete bipartite graphs. The \textit{size} of such a cover is the sum of the sizes of the bicliques. Small-size biclique covers of graphs are ubiquitous in computational geometry, and have been shown to be useful compact representations of graphs. We give a brief survey of classical and recent results on biclique covers and their applications, and give new families of graphs having biclique covers of near-linear size. In particular, we show that semilinear graphs, whose edges are defined by linear relations in bounded dimensional space, always have biclique covers of size $O(n\polylog n)$. This generalizes many previously known results on special classes of graphs including interval graphs, permutation graphs, and graphs of bounded boxicity, but also new classes such as intersection graphs of L-shapes in the plane. It also directly implies the bounds for Zarankiewicz's problem derived by Basit, Chernikov, Starchenko, Tao, and Tran (\textit{Forum Math. Sigma}, 2021). We also consider capped graphs, also known as terrain-like graphs, defined as ordered graphs forbidding a certain ordered pattern on four vertices. Terrain-like graphs contain the induced subgraphs of terrain visibility graphs. We give an elementary proof that these graphs admit biclique partitions of size $O(n\log^3 n)$. This provides a simple combinatorial analogue of a classical result from Agarwal, Alon, Aronov, and Suri on polygon visibility graphs (\textit{Discrete Comput. Geom.} 1994). Finally, we prove that there exists families of unit disk graphs on $n$ vertices that do not admit biclique coverings of size $o(n^{4/3})$, showing that we are unlikely to improve on Szemerédi-Trotter type incidence bounds for higher-degree semialgebraic graphs.
title Compact Representation of Semilinear and Terrain-like Graphs
topic Combinatorics
Computational Geometry
Discrete Mathematics
05C75, 05C85
G.2.2; F.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00252