WELL-COVERED GRAPHS: A SURVEY

Abstract

A graph G is well-covered (or w-c) if every maximal independent set of points in G is also maximum. Clearly, this is equivalent to the property that the greedy algorithm for constructing a maximal independent set always results in a maximum independent set. Although the problem of independence number is well-known to be NP-complete, it is trivially polynomial for well-covered graphs.