New results on word-representable graphs

Abstract

A graph G=(V,E) is word-representable if there exists a word w over the alphabet V such that letters x and y alternate in w if and only if (x,y)∈E for each x≠y. The set of word-representable graphs generalizes several important and well-studied graph families, such as circle graphs, comparability graphs, 3-colorable graphs, graphs of vertex degree at most 3, etc. By answering an open question from Halldórsson et al. (2011), in the present paper we show that not all graphs of vertex degree at most 4 are word-representable. Combining this result with some previously known facts, we derive that the number of n-vertex word-representable graphs is 2n23+o(n2).