On characterizations for subclasses of directed co-graphs

Abstract Undirected co-graphs are those graphs which can be generated from the single vertex graph by disjoint union and join operations. Co-graphs are exactly the $$P_4$$ P 4 -free graphs (where $$P_4$$ P 4 denotes the path on 4 vertices). The class of co-graphs itself and several subclasses haven been intensively studied. Among these are trivially perfect graphs, threshold graphs, weakly quasi threshold graphs, and simple co-graphs. Directed co-graphs are digraphs which can be defined by, starting with the single vertex graph, applying the disjoint union, order composition, and series composition. By omitting the series composition we obtain the subclass of oriented co-graphs which has been analyzed by Lawler in the 1970s. The restriction to linear expressions was recently studied by Boeckner. Until now, there are only a few versions of subclasses of directed co-graphs. By transmitting the restrictions of undirected subclasses to the directed classes, we define the corresponding subclasses for directed co-graphs. We consider directed and oriented versions of threshold graphs, simple co-graphs, co-simple co-graphs, trivially perfect graphs, co-trivially perfect graphs, weakly quasi threshold graphs and co-weakly quasi threshold graphs. For all these classes we give characterizations by finite sets of minimal forbidden induced subdigraphs. Additionally, we analyze the relations between these graph classes.