Finding cactus roots in polynomial time.

Abstract

A graph H is a square root of a graph G, or equivalently, G is the square of H, if G can be obtained from H by adding an edge between any two vertices in H that are of distance 2. The SQUARE ROOT problem is that of deciding whether a given graph admits a square root. The problem of testing whether a graph admits a square root which belongs to some specified graph class H is called the H-SQUARE ROOT problem. By showing boundedness of treewidth we prove that SQUARE ROOT is polynomial-time solvable on some classes of graphs with small clique number and that H-SQUARE ROOT is polynomial-time solvable when H is the class of cactuses.