Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

A graph is an interval graph if and only if each of its vertices can be associated with an interval on the real line in such a way that two vertices are adjacent in the graph exactly when the corresponding intervals have a nonempty intersection. An efficient algorithm for testing isomorphism of interval graphs is implemented using a data structure called a PQ-tree. The algorithm runs in 0(n + e) steps for graphs having n vertices and e edges. It is shown that for a somewhat larger class of graphs, namely the chordal graphs, isomorphism is as hard as for general graphs.