Counting Horizontal Visibility Graphs

Abstract: Horizontal visibility graphs (HVGs, for short) are a common tool used in the analysis and classification of time series with applications in many scientific fields. In this article, extending previous work by Lacasa and Luque, we prove that HVGs associated to data sequences without equal entries are completely determined by their ordered degree sequence. Moreover, we show that HVGs for data sequences without and with equal entries are counted by the Catalan numbers and the large Schr\"oder numbers, respectively.