Pairwise Compatibility Representations of Multidimensional Grid Graphs

Abstract: Pairwise compatibility graphs (PCGs) represent graph adjacency by an interval of leaf-to-leaf distances in a weighted tree. We study grid graphs under the PCG model and two natural extensions: multi-interval PCGs and OR-PCGs. First, we prove that every $d$-dimensional grid graph is a $(d-1)$-interval-PCG. The construction decomposes the grid into hyperplanes of constant coordinate sum and uses a large-base encoding so that distances between consecutive hyperplanes identify the coordinate direction of an edge. A pair of nearby code values is then merged into one interval, reducing the number of intervals from $d$ to $d-1$. Second, we prove that every $d$-dimensional grid is a $\lceil d/2\rceil$-OR-PCG by grouping coordinate directions into pairs; each paired-direction graph is a disjoint union of two-dimensional grid graphs and is therefore a PCG. Finally, an exact tree-metric satisfiability computation shows that $P_3\square P_3\square P_3$ is not a PCG. Consequently, the minimum number of intervals sufficient for all three-dimensional grid graphs is exactly two, resolving a previously posed open problem. The same obstruction shows that the OR-PCG bound is tight in dimension three and implies that every grid with at least three factors of order at least three is not a PCG.