Claw-free graphs with strongly perfect complements. Fractional and integral version

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Yori Zwols, Columbia University
Fine Hall 224

Strongly perfect graphs have been studied by several authors (e.g. Berge, Duchet, Ravindra, Wang). This paper deals with a fractional relaxation of strong perfection. Motivated by a wireless networking problem, we consider claw-free graphs that are fractionally strongly perfect in the complement. We obtain a forbidden induced subgraph characterization and display graph-theoretic properties of such graphs. It turns out that the forbidden induced subgraphs that characterize claw-free fractionally co-strongly perfect graphs are precisely the cycle of length 6, all cycles of length 8 and longer, four particular graphs, and a collection of graphs that are constructed by taking two graphs, each a copy of one of three particular graphs, and joining them by a path of arbitrary length in a certain way. Wang gave a characterization of strongly perfect claw-free graphs. As a corollary of the results in this paper, we obtain a characterization of claw-free graphs whose complements are strongly perfect.