Fractional biclique covers and partitions of graphs (Q2500993)

Summary: A biclique is a complete bipartite subgraph of a graph. This paper investigates the fractional biclique cover number, \(bc^*(G)\), and the fractional biclique partition number, \(bp^*(G)\), of a graph \(G\). It is observed that \(bc^*(G)\) and \(bp^*(G)\) provide lower bounds on the biclique cover and partition numbers respectively, and conditions for equality are given. It is also shown that \(bc^*(G)\) is a better lower bound on the Boolean rank of a binary matrix than the maximum number of isolated ones of the matrix. In addition, it is noted that \(bc^*(G) \leq bp^*(G) \leq \beta^*(G)\), the fractional vertex cover number. Finally, the application of \(bc^*(G)\) and \(bp^*(G)\) to two different weak products is discussed.