cs.SISep 14, 2026

On the Expressive Power of Implicit Line-Graph Higher-Order Weisfeiler--Leman

Authors: Fan Yang

Abstract

Whitney's theorem allows isomorphism testing for connected simple graphs, apart from K3K_3 and K1,3K_{1,3}, to be formulated as distinguishing their line graphs. However, the relation between fixed-dimensional Weisfeiler--Leman (WL) expressivity on line graphs and on their roots remains unresolved. We study this relation through Implicit Line-Graph WL (ILG-kk-WL), which is exactly kk-WL on L(G)L(G), executed over the edges of GG with line-graph relations derived from endpoint incidence and without explicitly constructing L(G)L(G). On the Whitney-general class, the relation between root-domain and line-graph WL depends on kk. For k=1,2k=1,2, ILG-kk-WL adds no distinguishing power beyond root-domain 11-WL and misses some pairs that 11-WL separates. For k=3k=3, we prove the backward containment L(G)3-WLL(H)G3-WLHL(G)\equiv_{3\text{-WL}}L(H)\Rightarrow G\equiv_{3\text{-WL}}H. Strongly regular witness pairs, including the Shrikhande/rook pair, show that ILG-33-WL is strictly more expressive than 33-WL. The backward containment also extends to disconnected graphs with no isolated vertices when every connected component is Whitney-general. Deterministic ILG-33-WL separates all three substructure-counting witness pairs, all 105105 pairs in SR25, and 359359 of 400400 BREC pairs. An untrained dense ILG-33-GNN gives the same pairwise verdicts on these evaluations.

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