An embedding technique in the study of word-representability of graphs

Word-representable graphs, which are the same as semi-transitively orientable graphs, generalize several fundamental classes of graphs. In this paper we propose a novel approach to study word-representability of graphs using a technique of homomorphisms. As a proof of concept, we apply our method to show word-representability of the simplified graph of overlapping permutations that we introduce in this paper. For another application, we obtain results on word-representability of certain subgraphs of simplified de Bruijn graphs that were introduced recently by Petyuk and studied in the context of word-representability.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).