Abstract
The quadratic embedding constant (QEC) of a finite, simple, connected graph
originated from the classical work of Schoenberg [Ann. of Math., 1935] and
[Trans. Amer. Math. Soc., 1938] on Euclidean distance geometry. In this
article, we study the QEC of graphs in terms of two graph operations: the
Cartesian product and the join of graphs. We derive a general formula for the
QEC of the join of an arbitrary graph with a regular graph and with a complete
multipartite graph. We then provide quadratic embedding constants for the
Cartesian product of an arbitrary graph $G$ with a complete graph and with a
complete bipartite graph in terms of QEC$(G)$.
Abstract
We study embeddings of graphs with bounded treewidth or bounded simple
treewidth into the undirected graph underlying the directed product of two
directed graphs. If the factors have bounded maximum indegrees, then the
product graph has bounded maximum indegree and therefore is sparse. We prove
that every graph of simple treewidth $k$ is contained in (ignoring edge
directions) the directed product of directed graphs $\vec H_1$ and $\vec H_2$,
with $\Delta^-(\vec H_1), \Delta^-(\vec H_2) \leq k-1 $ and $\text{tw}(H_1),
\text{tw}(H_2) \leq k-1$. Further, we show that this treewidth bound is best
possible. Several corollaries follow from our results: every outerplanar graph
is contained in the directed product of trees with maximum indegree $1$, and
every planar graph with treewidth $3$ is contained in a directed product of
graphs with treewidth $2$ and maximum indegree $2$. However, for graphs of
treewidth $k$, we prove a negative result: for any integers $s, t, k \geq 1$,
there is a graph $G$ with treewidth $k$ not contained in the directed product
of $\vec H_1$ and $\vec H_2$ for any directed graphs $\vec H_1$ and $\vec H_2$
with $\Delta^-(\vec H_1) \leq s$, $\Delta^-(\vec H_2) \leq t$, and
$\text{tw}(H_1), \text{tw}(H_2) \leq k-1$. This result stands in stark contrast
to the strong product case, where Liu, Norin and Wood [arXiv:2410.20333] proved
that the optimal lower bound on the factors is about half the treewidth.