Hilbert fragments

Abstract

In earlier work, we proved that the length polyhedron of an interval order has a unique Hilbert basis and that every element of this basis is a binary vector. The supports of these binary vectors form a set system whose intersection graph is a cocomparability graph. This leads naturally to the question of which graphs can arise as intersection graphs of such Hilbert-basis supports. We introduce Hilbert fragments, defined as induced subgraphs of these intersection graphs. Thus Hilbert fragments form a hereditary class of cocomparability graphs recording the intersection patterns among the supports of Hilbert-basis elements of interval-order length polyhedra. We characterize Hilbert fragments by an axiomatically defined vertex-labeling, called a track-labeling, and give applications illustrating how this characterization can reveal an underlying one-dimensional structure even when the Hilbert fragments themselves are not interval graphs.