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Auteurs principaux: Grobler, Mario, Morawietz, Nils, Sacher, Silas Cato
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.07899
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author Grobler, Mario
Morawietz, Nils
Sacher, Silas Cato
author_facet Grobler, Mario
Morawietz, Nils
Sacher, Silas Cato
contents The lettericity of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is defined as the smallest size of an alphabet $Σ$ such that there is a word $w_1 \dots w_{|V|} \in Σ^*$ and a decoder $\mathcal{D} \subseteq Σ^2$ with the property that $G$ is isomorphic to the letter graph $G(\mathcal{D}, w)$, that is, the graph with vertex set $\{1, \dots, n\}$ and edge set $\{ij \mid 1\leq i < j \leq n, w_iw_j \in \mathcal{D}\}$. Note that $G(\mathcal{D}, w)$ can be seen as a graph with inherent coloring $χ\colon V(G) \rightarrow Σ$. It is unknown whether the lettericity of a given graph can be computed in polynomial time. The problem to determine the lettericity of a given graph is called the lettericity problem. As a step towards answering the complexity of this problem, we investigate the following retrieval problems: given a graph $G$ together with two of the three solution-objects (word $w$, decoder $\mathcal{D}$, and coloring $χ$), the goal is to compute the third solution-object. We show that word retrieval and decoder retrieval are solvable in polynomial time, while coloring retrieval is equivalent to the graph isomorphism problem. Beyond this, we introduce symmetric lettericity which is a restricted version of lettericity where each decoder needs to be symmetrical ($ab\in \mathcal{D}$ if and only if $ba\in \mathcal{D}$). As we show, the symmetric lettericity of a graph always equals the neighborhood diversity of the graph, which in fact can be computed in linear time.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_07899
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Settling the Complexity of the Lettericity Problem
Grobler, Mario
Morawietz, Nils
Sacher, Silas Cato
Data Structures and Algorithms
The lettericity of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is defined as the smallest size of an alphabet $Σ$ such that there is a word $w_1 \dots w_{|V|} \in Σ^*$ and a decoder $\mathcal{D} \subseteq Σ^2$ with the property that $G$ is isomorphic to the letter graph $G(\mathcal{D}, w)$, that is, the graph with vertex set $\{1, \dots, n\}$ and edge set $\{ij \mid 1\leq i < j \leq n, w_iw_j \in \mathcal{D}\}$. Note that $G(\mathcal{D}, w)$ can be seen as a graph with inherent coloring $χ\colon V(G) \rightarrow Σ$. It is unknown whether the lettericity of a given graph can be computed in polynomial time. The problem to determine the lettericity of a given graph is called the lettericity problem. As a step towards answering the complexity of this problem, we investigate the following retrieval problems: given a graph $G$ together with two of the three solution-objects (word $w$, decoder $\mathcal{D}$, and coloring $χ$), the goal is to compute the third solution-object. We show that word retrieval and decoder retrieval are solvable in polynomial time, while coloring retrieval is equivalent to the graph isomorphism problem. Beyond this, we introduce symmetric lettericity which is a restricted version of lettericity where each decoder needs to be symmetrical ($ab\in \mathcal{D}$ if and only if $ba\in \mathcal{D}$). As we show, the symmetric lettericity of a graph always equals the neighborhood diversity of the graph, which in fact can be computed in linear time.
title Towards Settling the Complexity of the Lettericity Problem
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.07899