The Recognition of Simple-Triangle Graphs and of Linear-Interval Orders Is Polynomial

Intersection graphs of geometric objects have been extensively studied, both due to their interesting structure and their numerous applications; prominent examples include interval graphs and permutation graphs. In this paper we study a natural graph class that generalizes both interval and permutation graphs, namely simple-triangle graphs. Simple-triangle graphs – also known as PI graphs (for Point-Interval) – are the intersection graphs of triangles that are defined by a point on a line L1 and an interval on a parallel line L2. They lie naturally between permutation and trapezoid graphs, which are the intersection graphs of line segments between L1 and L2 and of trapezoids between L1 and L2, respectively. Although various efficient recognition algorithms for permutation and trapezoid graphs are well known to exist, the recognition of simple-triangle graphs has remained an open problem since their introduction by Corneil and Kamula three decades ago. In this paper we resolve this problem by proving that simple-triangle graphs can be recognized in polynomial time. As a consequence, our algorithm also solves a longstanding open problem in the area of partial orders, namely the recognition of linear-interval orders, i.e. of partial orders P = P1 ∩ P2, where P1 is a linear order and P2 is an interval order. This is one of the first results on recognizing partial orders P that are the intersection of orders from two different classes P1 and P2. In contrast, partial orders P which are the intersection of orders from the same class P have been extensively investigated, and in most cases the complexity status of these recognition problems has been established.