Properties and Recognition of Atom Graphs

Abstract

The atom graph of a connected graph is a graph whose vertices are the atoms obtained by clique minimal separator decomposition of this graph, and whose edges are the edges of all its atom trees. A graph G is an atom graph if there is a graph whose atom graph is isomorphic to G. We study the class of atom graphs, which is also the class of atom graphs of chordal graphs, and the associated recognition problem. We prove that each atom graph is a perfect graph and give a characterization of atom graphs in terms of a spanning tree, inspired by the characterization of clique graphs of chordal graphs as expanded trees. We also characterize the chordal graphs having the same atom and clique graph, and solve the recognition problem of atom graphs of two graph classes.