A graph with at most two vertices of the same degree is called antiregular (Merris 2003), maximally nonregular (Zykov 1990) or quasiperfect (Behzad, Chartrand 1967). If s_{k} is the number of independent sets of cardinality k in a graph G, then I(G;x) = s_{0} + s_{1}x + ... + s_{alpha}x^{alpha} is the independence polynomial of G (Gutman, Harary 1983), where alpha = alpha(G) is the size of a maximum independent set. In this paper we derive closed formulae for the independence polynomials of antiregular graphs. In particular, we deduce that every antiregular graph A is uniquely defined by its independence polynomial I(A;x), within the family of threshold graphs. Moreover, I(A;x) is logconcave with at most two real roots, and I(A;-1) belongs to {-1,0}.
An independent set in a graph is a set of pairwise non-adjacent vertices. The independence number $α{(G)}$ is the size of a maximum independent set in the graph $G$. The independence polynomial of a graph is the generating function for the sequence of numbers of independent sets of each size. In other words, the $k$-th coefficient of the independence polynomial equals the number of independent sets comprised of $k$ vertices. For instance, the degree of the independence polynomial of the graph $G$ is equal to $α{(G)}$. In 1987, Alavi, Malde, Schwenk, and Erd{ö}s conjectured that the independenc…
An independent set in a graph is a set of pairwise non-adjacent vertices. Let $α(G)$ denote the cardinality of a maximum independent set in the graph $G = (V, E)$. Gutman and Harary defined the independence polynomial of $G$ \[ I(G;x) = \sum_{k=0}^{α(G)}{s_k}x^{k}={s_0}+{s_1}x+{s_2}x^{2}+...+{s_{α(G)}}x^{α(G)}, \] where $s_k$ denotes the number of independent sets of cardinality $k$ in the graph $G$. A comprehensive survey on the subject is due to Levit and Mandrescu, where some recursive formulas are allowing to calculate the independence polynomial. A direct implementation of these recursion…
If alpha=alpha(G) is the maximum size of an independent set and s_{k} equals the number of stable sets of cardinality k in graph G, then I(G;x)=s_{0}+s_{1}x+...+s_{alpha}x^{alpha} is the independence polynomial of G. In this paper we prove that: 1. I(T;-1) equels either -1 or 0 or 1 for every tree T; 2. I(G;-1)=0 for every connected well-covered graph G of girth > 5, non-isomorphic to C_{7} or K_{2}; 3. the absolute value of I(G;-1) is not greater than 2^nu(G), for every graph G, where nu(G) is its cyclomatic number.
An independent set in a graph is a set of pairwise non-adjacent vertices, and alpha(G) is the size of a maximum independent set in the graph G. A matching is a set of non-incident edges, while mu(G) is the cardinality of a maximum matching. If s_{k} is the number of independent sets of cardinality k in G, then I(G;x)=s_{0}+s_{1}x+s_{2}x^{2}+...+s_{α(G)}x^{α(G)} is called the independence polynomial of G (Gutman and Harary, 1983). If $s_{j}=s_{α-j}$, 0=< j =< alpha(G), then I(G;x) is called symmetric (or palindromic). It is known that the graph G*2K_{1} obtained by joining each vertex of G to t…
If for any $k$ the $k$-th coefficient of a polynomial $I(G;x)$ is equal to the number of stable sets of cardinality $k$ in the graph $G$, then it is called the independence polynomial of $G$ (Gutman and Harary, 1983). Alavi, Malde, Schwenk and Erdos (1987) conjectured that $I(G;x)$ is unimodal, whenever $G$ is a forest, while Brown, Dilcher and Nowakowski (2000) conjectured that $I(G;x)$ is unimodal for any well-covered graph G. Michael and Traves (2003) showed that the assertion is false for well-covered graphs with $a(G)$ > 3 ($a(G)$ is the size of a maximum stable set of the graph $G$), whi…
An independent set in a graph is a set of pairwise non-adjacent vertices, and a(G) is the size of a maximum independent set in the graph G. If s_{k} is the number of independent sets of cardinality k in G, then I(G;x)=s_0+s_1*x+s_2*x^2+...+s_a*x^a,a=a(G), is called the independence polynomial of G (I. Gutman and F. Harary, 1983). If s_{a-i}=f(i)*s_{i} holds for every i, then I(G;x) is called f-symmetric (f-palindromic). If f(i)=1, then I(G;x) is symmetric (palindromic). The corona of the graphs G and H is the graph G*H obtained by joining each vertex of G to all the vertices of a copy of H. In…
We show that there are polynomial-time algorithms to compute maximum independent sets in the categorical products of two cographs and two splitgraphs. The ultimate categorical independence ratio of a graph G is defined as lim_{k --> infty} α(G^k)/n^k. The ultimate categorical independence ratio is polynomial for cographs, permutation graphs, interval graphs, graphs of bounded treewidth and splitgraphs. When G is a planar graph of maximal degree three then alpha(G \times K_4) is NP-complete. We present a PTAS for the ultimate categorical independence ratio of planar graphs. We present an O^*(n^…
The independence gap of a graph was introduced by Ekim et al. (2018) as a measure of how far a graph is from being well-covered. It is defined as the difference between the maximum and minimum size of a maximal independent set. We investigate the independence gap of a graph from structural and algorithmic points of view, with a focus on classes of perfect graphs. Generalizing results on well-covered graphs due to Dean and Zito (1994) and Hujdurović et al. (2018), we express the independence gap of a perfect graph in terms of clique partitions and use this characterization to develop a polynomi…
It is known from the work of Shearer (1985) (and also Scott and Sokal (2005)) that the independence polynomial $Z_G(λ)$ of a graph $G$ of maximum degree at most $d+1$ does not vanish provided that $\vertλ\vert \leq \frac{d^d}{(d+1)^{d+1}}$. Significant extensions of this result have recently been given in the case $\Re λ\geq 0$ by Peters and Regts (2019) and Bencs and Csikvári (arxiv:1807.08963). In this paper, our motivation is to further extend these results and find zero free regions when $\Re λ\leq 0$. We begin by giving new geometric criteria for establishing zero-free regions as well as …
We study an algorithm for approximating the multivariate independence polynomial $Z(\mathbf{z})$, with negative and complex arguments, an object that has strong connections to combinatorics and to statistical physics. In particular, the independence polynomial with negative arguments, $Z(-\mathbf{p})$, determines the Shearer region, the maximal region of probabilities to which the Lovasz Local Lemma (LLL) can be extended (Shearer 1985). In statistical physics, complex zeros of the independence polynomial relate to existence of phase transitions. Our main result is a deterministic algorithm to …
We show that there are polynomial-time algorithms to compute maximum independent sets in the categorical products of two cographs and two splitgraphs. We show that the ultimate categorical independence ratio is computable in polynomial time for cographs.
We consider the following problem: for a given graph G and two integers k and d, can we apply a fixed graph operation at most k times in order to reduce a given graph parameter $π$ by at least d? We show that this problem is NP-hard when the parameter is the independence number and the graph operation is vertex deletion or edge contraction, even for fixed d=1 and when restricted to chordal graphs. We also give a polynomial time algorithm for bipartite graphs when the operation is edge contraction, the parameter is the independence number and d is fixed. Further, we complete the complexity dich…
In this article we consider certain well-known polynomials associated with graphs including the independence polynomial and the chromatic polynomial. These polynomials count certain objects in graphs: independent sets in the case of the independence polynomial and proper colourings in the case of the chromatic polynomial. They also have interpretations as partition functions in statistical physics. The algorithmic problem of (approximately) computing these types of polynomials has been studied for close to 50 years, especially using Markov chain techniques. Around eight years ago, Barvinok dev…
We consider the problem of optimizing a nonlinear objective function over a weighted independence system presented by a linear-optimization oracle. We provide a polynomial-time algorithm that determines an r-best solution for nonlinear functions of the total weight of an independent set, where r is a constant that depends on certain Frobenius numbers of the individual weights and is independent of the size of the ground set. In contrast, we show that finding an optimal (0-best) solution requires exponential time even in a very special case of the problem.
The spectral independence approach of Anari et al. (2020) utilized recent results on high-dimensional expanders of Alev and Lau (2020) and established rapid mixing of the Glauber dynamics for the hard-core model defined on weighted independent sets. We develop the spectral independence approach for colorings, and obtain new algorithmic results for the corresponding counting/sampling problems. Let $α^*\approx 1.763$ denote the solution to $\exp(1/x)=x$ and let $α>α^*$. We prove that, for any triangle-free graph $G=(V,E)$ with maximum degree $Δ$, for all $q\geqαΔ+1$, the mixing time of the Glaub…
A set C of vertices of a graph is P_3-convex if every vertex outside C has at most one neighbor in C. The convex hull σ(A) of a set A is the smallest P_3-convex set that contains A. A set M is convexly independent if for every vertex x \in M, x \notin σ(M-x). We show that the maximal number of vertices that a convexly independent set in a permutation graph can have, can be computed in polynomial time.
The independence numbers of powers of graphs have been long studied, under several definitions of graph products, and in particular, under the strong graph product. We show that the series of independence numbers in strong powers of a fixed graph can exhibit a complex structure, implying that the Shannon Capacity of a graph cannot be approximated (up to a sub-polynomial factor of the number of vertices) by any arbitrarily large, yet fixed, prefix of the series. This is true even if this prefix shows a significant increase of the independence number at a given power, after which it stabilizes f…
