On the Galois Lattice of Bipartite Distance Hereditary Graphs

We give a complete characterization of bipartite graphs having tree-like Galois lattices. We prove that the poset obtained by deleting bottom and top elements from the Galois lattice of a bipartite graph is tree-like if and only if the graph is a Bipartite Distance Hereditary graph. By relying on the interplay between bipartite distance hereditary graphs and series-parallel graphs, we show that the lattice can be realized as the containment relation among directed paths in an arborescence. Moreover, a compact encoding of Bipartite Distance Hereditary graphs is proposed, that allows optimal time computation of neighborhood intersections and maximal bicliques.