A Note on Threshold Dimension of Permutation Graphs

Diptendu Bhowmick

Published 2009-06-05Version 1

A graph $G(V,E)$ is a threshold graph if there exist non-negative reals $w_v, v \in V$ and $t$ such that for every $U \subseteq V$, $\sum_{v \in U} w_v\leq t$ if and only if $U$ is a stable set. The {\it threshold dimension} of a graph $G(V,E)$, denoted as $t(G)$, is the smallest integer $k$ such that $E$ can be covered by $k$ threshold spanning subgraphs of $G$. A permutation graph is a graph that can be represented as the intersection graph of a family of line segments that connect two parallel lines in the Euclidean plane. In this paper we will show that if $G$ is a permutation graph then $t(G) \leq \alpha(G)$ (where $\alpha(G)$ is the cardinality of maximum independent set in $G$) and this bound is tight. As a corollary we will show that $t(G) \leq \frac{n}{2}$ where $n$ is the number of vertices in the permutation graph $G$. This bound is also tight.