Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2009

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Mathematics

Committee Chair

Kubicki, Grzegorz Michal

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Kezdy, Andre E.

Committee Member

Kubicka, Ewa

Committee Member

Powers, Robert C.

Committee Member

Srinivasan, S.

Author's Keywords

Outerplanar graphs; Graph theroy; Geodesic intervals; Independence numbers; Eccentricity

Subject

Graphic methods; Geodesy--Observations

Abstract

Outerplanar graphs are planar graphs that have a plane embedding in which each vertex lies on the boundary of the exterior region. An outerplanar graph is maximal outerplanar if the graph obtained by adding an edge is not outerplanar. Maximal outerplanar graphs are also known as triangulations of polygons. The spine of a maximal outerplanar graph G is the dual graph of G without the vertex that corresponds to the exterior region. In this thesis we study metric properties involving geodesic intervals, geodetic sets, Steiner sets, different concepts of boundary, and also relationships between the independence numbers and domination numbers of maximal outerplanar graphs and their spines. In Chapter 2 we find an extension of a result by Beyer, et al. [3] that deals with Hamiltonian degree sequences in maximal outerplanar graphs. In Chapters 3 and 4 we give sharp bounds relating the independence number and domination number, respectively, of a maximal outerplanar graph to those of its spine. In Chapter 5 we discuss the boundary, contour, eccentricity, periphery, and extreme set of a graph. We give a characterization of the boundary of maximal outerplanar graphs that involves the degrees of vertices. We find properties that characterize the contour of a maximal outerplanar graph. The other main result of this chapter gives characterizations of graphs induced by the contour and by the periphery of a maximal outerplanar graph. In Chapter 6 we show that the generalized intervals in a maximal outerplanar graph are convex. We use this result to characterize geodetic sets in maximal outerplanar graphs. We show that every Steiner set in a maximal outerplanar graph is a geodetic set and also show some differences between these types of sets. We present sharp bounds for geodetic numbers and Steiner numbers of maximal outerplanar graphs.

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