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The min-diameter of a directed graph G is a measure of the largest distance between nodes. It is equal to the maximum min-distance d_{min}(u,v) across all pairs u,v ∈ V(G), where d_{min}(u,v) = min(d(u,v), d(v,u)). Min-diameter approximation in directed graphs has attracted attention recently as an offshoot of the classical and well-studied diameter approximation problem. Our work provides a 3/2-approximation algorithm for min-diameter in DAGs running in time O(m^{1.426} n^{0.288}), and a faster almost-3/2-approximation variant which runs in time O(m^{0.713} n). (An almost-α-approximation algorithm determines the min-diameter to within a multiplicative factor of α plus constant additive error.) This is the first known algorithm to solve 3/2-approximation for min-diameter in sparse DAGs in truly subquadratic time O(m^{2-ε}) for ε > 0; previously only a 2-approximation was known. By a conditional lower bound result of [Abboud et al, SODA 2016], a better than 3/2-approximation can't be achieved in truly subquadratic time under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH), so our result is conditionally tight. We additionally obtain a new conditional lower bound for min-diameter approximation in general directed graphs, showing that under SETH, one cannot achieve an approximation factor below 2 in truly subquadratic time. Our work also presents the first study of approximating bichromatic min-diameter, which is the maximum min-distance between oppositely colored vertices in a 2-colored graph. We show that SETH implies that in DAGs, a better than 2 approximation cannot be achieved in truly subquadratic time, and that in general graphs, an approximation within a factor below 5/2 is similarly out of reach. We then obtain an O(m)-time algorithm which determines if bichromatic min-diameter is finite, and an almost-2-approximation algorithm for bichromatic min-diameter with runtime Õ(min(m^{4/3} n^{1/3}, m^{1/2} n^{3/2})). 

The claw is the graph $$K_{1,3}$$, and the fork is the graph obtained from the claw $$K_{1,3}$$ by subdividing one of its edges once. In this paper, we prove a structure theorem for the class of (claw, $$C_4$$)-free graphs that are not quasi-line graphs, and a structure theorem for the class of (fork, $$C_4$$)-free graphs that uses the class of (claw, $$C_4$$)-free graphs as a basic class. Finally, we show that every (fork, $$C_4$$)-free graph $$G$$ satisfies $$\chi(G)\leqslant \lceil\frac{3\omega(G)}{2}\rceil$$ via these structure theorems with some additional work on coloring basic classes.