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When is it true that if $G$ is isomorphic to a spanning subgraph of $H$ and $H$ is isomorphic to a spanning subgraph of $G$, then $G$ is isomorphic to $H$?

Clearly this is true if $G$ and $H$ are finite graphs; however, this is not necessarily true for infinite graphs. For instance, let $G$ be an infinite clique together with infinitely many isolated vertices and let $H$ be two disjoint infinite cliques together with infinitely many isolated vertices. We posed this problem in Corsten, DeBiasio, and McKenney - Density of monochromatic infinite subgraphs II (see Problem 2.12), but since this question seems more basic and is only tangential to our results, I figured I would ask here as well.

Addendum 1: After doing some more digging, I found this related post Non-isomorphic graphs with bijective graph homomorphisms in both directions between them which just asked for examples of such graphs $G$ and $H$ where $G$ and $H$ are not isomorphic.

Addendum 2: There was a comment yesterday, which for some reason seems to have been deleted, suggesting the term "co-hopfian graph." I found this paper Cain and Maltcev - Hopfian and co-hopfian subsemigroups and extensions which defines co-hopfian graphs (see the paragraph before Lemma 4.5) as those in which every injective homomorphism from $G$ to $G$ (i.e. injective endomorphism) is an isomorphism. It's unclear to me if this makes a difference in the characterization, but I now believe my question is equivalent to "Which graphs $G$ have the property that every bijective homomorphism from $G$ to $G$ (i.e. bijective endomorphism) is an automorphism." Sorry to overdo it, but my original question has now become three questions:

  1. Which graphs $G$ have the property that every injective endomorphism is an automorphism? (equivalently, when is it true that if $G$ is isomorphic to a subgraph of $H$ and $H$ is isomorphic to a subgraph of $G$, then $G$ is isomorphic to $H$?)

  2. Which graphs $G$ have the property that every bijective endomorphism is an automorphism? (equivalently, when is it true that if $G$ is isomorphic to a spanning subgraph of $H$ and $H$ is isomorphic to a spanning subgraph of $G$, then $G$ is isomorphic to $H$?)

  3. Are the answers to 1 and 2 the same?

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    $\begingroup$ It's reasonably easy to find locally finite (but still disconnected) examples via a similar trick. For example if you take $G$ to be the collection of all odd length paths, together with countably many isolated vertices and $H$ to be the collection of all even length paths together with countably many isolated vertices, then they are both isomorphic to a spanning subgraph of the other. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 30, 2020 at 8:28
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    $\begingroup$ The answers to 1 and 2 are not the same: A ray has injective endomorphisms which are not automorphisms (e.g. map every vertex to its successor), but the only bijective endomorphism is the identity. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 30, 2020 at 23:11

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This is an extended comment rather than an actual answer.

I think that any answer to your questions 1 and 2 is likely to be rather involved since the properties you ask are sensitive to small local changes in the graph. To illustrate what I mean, consider the following two graphs:

  1. $G_1$ has vertices $u_n, v_n$ for $n \in \mathbb Z$, and edges $u_nu_{n+1}$ and $u_{2n}v_n$ for $n \in \mathbb Z$, and $u_{2n+1}v_n$ for $n \in \mathbb N$.
  2. $G_2$ is obtained from $G_1$ by removing $v_0$.

Although these graphs are almost the same, they differ in terms of the properties you are asking:

$G_1$ has a bijective endomorphism which is not an isomorphism (defined by $u_n \mapsto u_{n+2}$ and $v_n \mapsto v_{n+1}$).

On the other hand, the only injective homomorphism from $G_2$ to itself is the identity: note that $v_0$ is a vertex of degree $2$ whose neighbours also have degree $\leq 2$, thus $v_0$ must be mapped to itself under any injective homomorphism. From there it is not hard to inductively show that the identity is the only injective endomorphism.

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