In this note we derive enumerative formulas for several types of labelled acyclic directed graphs by slight modifications of the familiar recursive formula for simple acyclic digraphs. These considerations are motivated by, and based upon, recent combinatorial results in geometric topology obtained by S.Choi, who established exact correspondences between acyclic digraphs and so-called small covers over hypercubes and related polytopes. In particular, we show that the number of equivalence classes of small covers over the cartesian product of $n$ copies of an $r$-simplex is equal to the number of acyclic $(2^r-1)$-multidigraphs of order $n$. Asymptotics follows easily since the main formula is represented by a simple equation in terms of special generating functions.
A descent of a labeled acyclic digraph is a directed edge $x\to y$ with $x>y$. In this paper, we find a recurrence for the number of labeled acyclic digraphs with a given number of descents.
An acyclic set in a digraph is a set of vertices that induces an acyclic subgraph. In 2011, Harutyunyan conjectured that every planar digraph on $n$ vertices without directed 2-cycles possesses an acyclic set of size at least $3n/5$. We prove this conjecture for digraphs where every directed cycle has length at least 8. More generally, if $g$ is the length of the shortest directed cycle, we show that there exists an acyclic set of size at least $(1 - 3/g)n$.
A descent of a labeled digraph is a directed edge (s, t) with s > t. We count strong tournaments, strong digraphs, and acyclic digraphs by descents and edges. To count strong tournaments we use Eulerian generating functions and to count strong and acyclic digraphs we use a new type of generating function that we call a graphic Eulerian generating function.
Let $D=(V,A)$ be an acyclic digraph. For $x\in V$ define $e_{_{D}}(x)$ to be the difference of the indegree and the outdegree of $x$. An acyclic ordering of the vertices of $D$ is a one-to-one map $g: V \rightarrow [1,|V|] $ that has the property that for all $x,y\in V$ if $(x,y)\in A$, then $g(x) < g(y)$. We prove that for every acyclic ordering $g$ of $D$ the following inequality holds: \[\sum_{x\in V} e_{_{D}}(x)\cdot g(x) ~\geq~ \frac{1}{2} \sum_{x\in V}[e_{_{D}}(x)]^2~.\] The class of acyclic digraphs for which equality holds is determined as the class of comparbility digraphs of posets o…
I present an algorithm that, given a number $n \geq 1$, computes a compact representation of the set of all noncrossing acyclic digraphs with $n$ nodes. This compact representation can be used as the basis for a wide range of dynamic programming algorithms on these graphs. As an illustration, along with this note I am releasing the implementation of an algorithm for counting the number of noncrossing acyclic digraphs of a given size. The same tabulation can be modified to count other classes of combinatorial structures, including weakly connected noncrossing acyclic digraphs, general noncrossi…
We show that the number of acyclic directed graphs with n labeled vertices is equal to the number of n X n (0,1)-matrices whose eigenvalues are positive real numbers.
We consider acyclic r-colorings in graphs and digraphs: they color the vertices in r colors, each of which induces an acyclic graph or digraph. (This includes the dichromatic number of a digraph, and the arboricity of a graph.) For any girth and sufficiently high degree, we prove the NP-completeness of acyclic r-colorings; our method also implies the known analogue for classical colorings. The proofs use high girth graphs with high arboricity and dichromatic numbers. High girth graphs and digraphs with high chromatic and dichromatic numbers have been well studied; we re-derive the results from…
Masuda (2008) provided the characterization of real Bott manifolds in terms of three operations on upper triangular matrices. We provide a combinatorial characterization of real Bott manifolds up to diffeomorphism in terms of operations on directed acyclic graphs. Our observation leads to several new invariants of real Bott manifolds.
We consider vertex coloring of an acyclic digraph $\Gdag$ in such a way that two vertices which have a common ancestor in $\Gdag$ receive distinct colors. Such colorings arise in a natural way when bounding space for various genetic data for efficient analysis. We discuss the corresponding {\em down-chromatic number} and derive an upper bound as a function of $D(\Gdag)$, the maximum number of descendants of a given vertex, and the degeneracy of the corresponding hypergraph. Finally we determine an asymptotically tight upper bound of the down-chromatic number in terms of the number of vertices …
Given a directed graph, an acyclic set is a set of vertices inducing a subgraph with no directed cycle. In this note we show that there exist oriented planar graphs of order $n$ for which the size of the maximum acyclic set is at most $\lceil \frac{n+1}{2} \rceil$, for any $n$. This disproves a conjecture of Harutyunyan and shows that a question of Albertson is best possible.
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) can be characterised as directed graphs whose strongly connected components are isolated vertices. Using this restriction on the strong components, we discover that when $m = cn$, where $m$ is the number of directed edges, $n$ is the number of vertices, and $c < 1$, the asymptotic probability that a random digraph is acyclic is an explicit function $p(c)$, such that $p(0) = 1$ and $p(1) = 0$. When $m = n(1 + μn^{-1/3})$, the asymptotic behaviour changes, and the probability that a digraph is acyclic becomes $n^{-1/3} C(μ)$, where $C(μ)$ is an explicit function of…
We prove that for every digraph $D$ and every choice of positive integers $k$, $\ell$ there exists a digraph $D^*$ with girth at least $\ell$ together with a surjective acyclic homomorphism $ψ\colon D^*\to D$ such that: (i) for every digraph $C$ of order at most $k$, there exists an acyclic homomorphism $D^*\to C$ if and only if there exists an acyclic homomorphism $D\to C$; and (ii) for every $D$-pointed digraph $C$ of order at most $k$ and every acyclic homomorphism $φ\colon D^*\to C$ there exists a unique acyclic homomorphism $f\colon D\to C$ such that $φ=f\circψ$. This implies the main res…
We consider the extension to directed graphs of the concept of achromatic number in terms of acyclic vertex colorings. The achromatic number have been intensely studied since it was introduced by Harary, Hedetniemi and Prins in 1967. The dichromatic number is a generalization of the chromatic number for digraphs defined by Neumann-Lara in 1982. A coloring of a digraph is an acyclic coloring if each subdigraph induced by each chromatic class is acyclic, and a coloring is complete if for any pair of chromatic classes $x,y$, there is an arc from $x$ to $y$ and an arc from $y$ to $x$. The dichroma…
Hefner [K. A. S. Hefner, K. F. Jones, S. -R. Kim, R. J. Lundgren and F. S. Roberts: $(i,j)$ competition graphs, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 32, (1991) 241-262] characterized acyclic digraphs each vertex of which has inderee and outdegree at most two and whose competition graphs are interval. They called acyclic digraphs each vertex of which has inderee and outdegree at most two $(2,2)$ digraphs. In this paper, we study the phylogeny graphs of $(2,2)$ digraphs. Especially, we give a sufficient condition and necessary conditions for $(2,2)$ digraphs having chordal phylogeny graphs. Phylogeny g…
The dichromatic number of a digraph $G$ is the smallest integer $χ_a(G)$ such that the vertex set of $G$ can be partitioned into $χ_a(G)$ sets, each of which induces an acyclic subdigraph. This is a generalization of the classic chromatic number of graphs. Here, we investigate the dichromatic number of the cartesian, direct, strong and lexicographic products, giving generalizations of some classic results on the chromatic number of products. More specifically, we prove that the following inequalities, known to hold for the chromatic number of graphs, still hold for the dichromatic number of di…
Burr and Erdős in 1975 conjectured, and Chvátal, Rödl, Szemerédi and Trotter later proved, that the Ramsey number of any bounded degree graph is linear in the number of vertices. In this paper, we disprove the natural directed analogue of the Burr--Erdős conjecture, answering a question of Bucić, Letzter, and Sudakov. If $H$ is an acyclic digraph, the oriented Ramsey number of $H$, denoted $\overrightarrow{r_{1}}(H)$, is the least $N$ such that every tournament on $N$ vertices contains a copy of $H$. We show that for any $Δ\geq 2$ and any sufficiently large $n$, there exists an acyclic digraph…
An acyclic homomorphism of a digraph $C$ to a digraph $D$ is a function $ρ\colon V(C)\to V(D)$ such that for every arc $uv$ of $C$, either $ρ(u)=ρ(v)$, or $ρ(u)ρ(v)$ is an arc of $D$ and for every vertex $v\in V(D)$, the subdigraph of $C$ induced by $ρ^{-1}(v)$ is acyclic. A digraph $D$ is a core if the only acyclic homomorphisms of $D$ to itself are automorphisms. In this paper, we prove that for certain choices of $p(n)$, random digraphs $D\in D(n,p(n))$ are asymptotically almost surely cores. For digraphs, this mirrors a result from [A. Bonato and P. Prałat, The good, the bad, and the great…
\qquad A \emph{coloring} of a digraph $D=(V,E)$ is a coloring of its vertices following the rule: Let $uv$ be an arc in $D$. If the tail $u$ is colored first, then the head $v$ should receive a color different from that of $u$. The \emph{dichromatic number} $χ_d(D)$ of $D$ is the minimum number of colors needed in a coloring of $D$. Besides obtaining many results and bounds for $χ_d(D)$ analogous to that of chromatic number of a graph, we prove $χ_d(D)=1$ if $D$ is acyclic. New notions of sequential colorings of graphs/digraphs are introduced. A characterization of acyclic digraph is obtained …
In the present paper we find a bijection between the set of small covers over an $n$-cube and the set of acyclic digraphs with $n$ labeled nodes. Using this, we give a formula of the number of small covers over an $n$-cube (generally, a product of simplices) up to Davis-Januszkiewicz equivalence classes and $\mathbf{Z}^n$-equivariant diffeomorphism classes. Moreover we prove that the number of acyclic digraphs with $n$ unlabeled nodes is an upper bound of the number of small covers over an $n$-cube up to diffeomorphism.
Motivated by the Caccetta-Haggkvist Conjecture, we prove that every digraph on n vertices with minimum outdegree 0.3465n contains an oriented triangle. This improves the bound of 0.3532n of Hamburger, Haxell and Kostochka. The main new tool we use in our proof is the theory of flag algebras developed recently by Razborov.
A $k$-majority digraph is a directed graph created by combining $k$ individual rankings on the same ground set to form a consensus where edges point in the direction indicated by a strict majority of the rankings. The $k$-majority digraph is used to model voting scenarios, where the vertices correspond to options ranked by $k$ voters. When $k$ is odd, the resulting digraph is always a tournament, called $k$-majority tournament. Let $f_k(n)$ be the minimum, over all $k$-majority tournaments with $n$ vertices, of the maximum order of an induced transitive sub-tournament. Recently, Milans, Schrei…
Say a digraph is k-free if it has no directed cycles of length at most k, for positive integers k. Thomasse conjectured that the number of induced 3-vertex directed paths in a simple 2-free digraph on n vertices is at most (n-1)n(n+1)/15. We present an unpublished result of Bondy proving that there are at most 2n^3/25 such paths, and prove that for the class of circular interval digraphs, an upper bound of n^3/16 holds. We also study the problem of bounding the number of (non-induced) 4-vertex paths in 3-free digraphs. We show an upper bound of 4n^4/75 using Bondy's result for Thomasse's conje…
We prove packing and counting theorems for arbitrarily oriented Hamilton cycles in ${\cal D}(n,p)$ for nearly optimal $p$ (up to a $\log ^cn$ factor). In particular, we show that given $t = (1-o(1))np$ Hamilton cycles $C_1,\ldots ,C_{t}$, each of which is oriented arbitrarily, a digraph $D \sim {\cal D}(n,p)$ w.h.p. contains edge disjoint copies of $C_1,\ldots ,C_t$, provided $p=ω(\log ^3 n/n)$. We also show that given an arbitrarily oriented $n$-vertex cycle $C$, a random digraph $D \sim {\cal D}(n,p)$ w.h.p. contains $(1\pm o(1))n!p^n$ copies of $C$, provided $p \geq \log ^{1 + o(1)}n/n$.
Let $D$ be a digraph and let $λ(D)$ denote the number of vertices in a longest path of $D$. For a pair of vertex-disjoint induced subdigraphs $A$ and $B$ of $D$, we say that $(A,B)$ is a partition of $D$ if $V(A)\cup V(B)=V(D).$ The Path Partition Conjecture (PPC) states that for every digraph, $D$, and every integer $q$ with $1\leq q\leqλ(D)-1$, there exists a partition $(A,B)$ of $D$ such that $λ(A)\leq q$ and $λ(B)\leqλ(D)-q.$ Let $T$ be a digraph with vertex set $\{u_1,\dots, u_t\}$ and for every $i\in [t]$, let $H_i$ be a digraph with vertex set $\{u_{i,j_i}\colon\, j_i\in [n_i]\}$. The {…
We investigate the complexity of generalizations of colourings (acyclic colourings, $(k,\ell)$-colourings, homomorphisms, and matrix partitions), for the class of transitive digraphs. Even though transitive digraphs are nicely structured, many problems are intractable, and their complexity turns out to be difficult to classify. We present some motivational results and several open problems.
We propose to study a problem that arises naturally from both Topological Numbering of Directed Acyclic Graphs, and Additive Coloring (also known as Lucky Labeling). Let $D$ be a digraph and $f$ a labeling of its vertices with positive integers; denote by $S(v)$ the sum of labels over all neighbors of each vertex $v$. The labeling $f$ is called \emph{topological additive numbering} if $S(u) < S(v)$ for each arc $(u,v)$ of the digraph. The problem asks to find the minimum number $k$ for which $D$ has a topological additive numbering with labels belonging to $\{ 1, \ldots, k \}$, denoted by $η_t…
We study the size of certain acyclic domains that arise from geometric and combinatorial constructions. These acyclic domains consist of all permutations visited by commuting equivalence classes of maximal reduced decompositions if we consider the symmetric group and, more generally, of all c-singletons of a Cambrian lattice associated to the weak order of a finite Coxeter group. For this reason, we call these sets Cambrian acyclic domains. Extending a closed formula of Galambos--Reiner for a particular acyclic domain called Fishburn's alternating scheme, we provide explicit formulae for the s…
For a fixed simple digraph $F$ and a given simple digraph $D$, an $F$-free $k$-coloring of $D$ is a vertex-coloring in which no induced copy of $F$ in $D$ is monochromatic. We study the complexity of deciding for fixed $F$ and $k$ whether a given simple digraph admits an $F$-free $k$-coloring. Our main focus is on the restriction of the problem to planar input digraphs, where it is only interesting to study the cases $k \in \{2,3\}$. From known results it follows that for every fixed digraph $F$ whose underlying graph is not a forest, every planar digraph $D$ admits an $F$-free $2$-coloring, a…
Many polynomial invariants are defined on graphs for encoding the combinatorial information and researching them algebraically. In this paper, we introduce the cycle polynomial and the path polynomial of directed graphs for counting cycles and paths, respectively. They satisfy recurrence relations with respect to elementary edge or vertex operations. They are related to other polynomials and can also be generalized to the bivariate cycle polynomial, the bivariate path polynomial and the trivariate cycle-path polynomial. And a most general digraph polynomial satisfying such a linear recurrence …
Given a digraph $G$, we propose a new method to find the recurrence equation for the number of vertices $n_k$ of the $k$-iterated line digraph $L^k(G)$, for $k\geq0$, where $L^0(G)=G$. We obtain this result by using the minimal polynomial of a quotient digraph $π(G)$ of $G$. We show some examples of this method applied to the so-called cyclic Kautz, the unicyclic, and the acyclic digraphs. In the first case, our method gives the enumeration of the ternary length-2 squarefree words of any length.
We approach the problem of counting the number of walks in a digraph from three different perspectives: enumerative combinatorics, linear algebra, and symbolic dynamics.
The dichromatic number $\vecχ(D)$ of a digraph $D$ is the smallest $k$ for which it admits a $k$-coloring where every color class induces an acyclic subgraph. Inspired by Hadwiger's conjecture for undirected graphs, several groups of authors have recently studied the containment of directed graph minors in digraphs with given dichromatic number. In this short note we improve several of the existing bounds and prove almost linear bounds by reducing the problem to a recent result of Postle on Hadwiger's conjecture.
We show that the 4-variable generating function of certain orientation related parameters of an ordered oriented matroid is the evaluation at (x + u, y+v) of its Tutte polynomial. This evaluation contains as special cases the counting of regions in hyperplane arrangements and of acyclic orientations in graphs. Several new 2-variable expansions of the Tutte polynomial of an oriented matroid follow as corollaries. This result hold more generally for oriented matroid perspectives, with specific special cases the counting of bounded regions in hyperplane arrangements or of bipolar acyclic orientat…
It is known (Bollobás (1978); Kostochka and Mazurova (1977)) that there exist graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ and of arbitrarily large girth whose chromatic number is at least $c Δ/ \log Δ$. We show an analogous result for digraphs where the chromatic number of a digraph $D$ is defined as the minimum integer $k$ so that $V(D)$ can be partitioned into $k$ acyclic sets, and the girth is the length of the shortest cycle in the corresponding undirected graph. It is also shown, in the same vein as an old result of Erdos (1962), that there are digraphs with arbitrarily large chromatic number where ever…
A sharp asymptotic formula for the number of strongly connected digraphs on $n$ labelled vertices with $m$ arcs, under a condition $m-n\to\infty$, $m=O(n)$, is obtained; this solves a problem posed by Wright back in $1977$. Our formula is a counterpart of a classic asymptotic formula, due to Bender, Canfield and McKay, for the total number of connected undirected graphs on $n$ vertices with $m$ edges. A key ingredient of their proof was a recurrence equation for the connected graphs count due to Wright. No analogue of Wright's recurrence seems to exist for digraphs. In a previous paper with Ni…
