Steinberg and Tovey proved that every n-vertex planar triangle-free graph has an independent set of size at least (n+1)/3, and described an infinite class of tight examples. We show that all n-vertex planar triangle-free graphs except for this one infinite class have independent sets of size at least (n+2)/3.
We determine the smallest simple triangle-free binary matroids that have no five-element independent flat. This solves a special case of a conjecture of Nelson and Norin.
Let $G$ be a triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices with adjacency matrix eigenvalues $μ_1(G)\geq μ_2(G)\geq \dots \geq μ_n(G)$. In this paper we study the quantity $$μ_1(G)+μ_n(G).$$ We prove that for any triangle-free graph $G$ we have $$μ_1(G)+μ_n(G)\leq (3-2\sqrt{2})n.$$ This was proved for regular graphs by Brandt, we show that the condition on regularity is not necessary. We also prove that among triangle-free strongly regular graphs the Higman-Sims graph achieves the maximum of $$\frac{μ_1(G)+μ_n(G)}{n}.$$
The celebrated Hadwiger's conjecture states that if a graph contains no $K_{t+1}$ minor then it is $t$-colourable. If true, it would in particular imply that every $n$-vertex $K_{t+1}$-minor-free graph has an independent set of size at least $n/t$. In 1982, Duchet and Meyniel proved that this bound holds within a factor $2$. Their bound has been improved; most notably in an absolute factor by Fox, which was later improved by Balogh and Kostochka. Here we consider the same question for triangle-free graphs. By the results of Shearer and Kostochka and Thomason, it follows that any triangle-free …
In this paper, we obtain a lower bound for the smallest eigenvalue of a regular graph containing many copies of a smaller fixed subgraph. This generalizes a result of Aharoni, Alon, and Berger in which the subgraph is a triangle. We apply our results to obtain a lower bound on the smallest eigenvalue of the associahedron graph, and we prove that this bound gives the correct order of magnitude of this eigenvalue. We also survey what is known regarding the second-largest eigenvalue of the associahedron graph.
Bang-Jensen, Bessy, Havet and Yeo showed that every digraph of independence number at most 2 and arc-connectivity at least 2 has an out-branching $B^+$ and an in-branching $B^-$ which are arc-disjoint (such two branchings are called a {\it good pair}), which settled a conjecture of Thomassen for digraphs of independence number 2. They also proved that every digraph on at most 6 vertices and arc-connectivity at least 2 has a good pair and gave an example of a 2-arc-strong digraph $D$ on 10 vertices with independence number 4 that has no good pair. They asked for the smallest number $n$ of verti…
In this article we proof the existence of 4-regular planar unit-distance graphs consisting only of unit triangles without additional triangles. It is shown that the smallest number of unit triangles is $\leq$6422.
An orientation of a graph is semi-transitive if it is acyclic, and for any directed path $v_0\rightarrow v_1\rightarrow \cdots\rightarrow v_k$ either there is no arc between $v_0$ and $v_k$, or $v_i\rightarrow v_j$ is an arc for all $0\leq i<j\leq k$. An undirected graph is semi-transitive if it admits a semi-transitive orientation. Semi-transitive graphs generalize several important classes of graphs and they are precisely the class of word-representable graphs studied extensively in the literature. Determining if a triangle-free graph is semi-transitive is an NP-hard problem. The existence o…
We prove that for any triangle-free intersection graph of $n$ axis-parallel segments in the plane, the independence number $α$ of this graph is at least $α\ge n/4 + Ω(\sqrt{n})$. We complement this with a construction of a graph in this class satisfying $α\le n/4 + c \sqrt{n}$ for an absolute constant $c$, which demonstrates the optimality of our result.
We study the relationship between the eternal domination number of a graph and its clique covering number using both large-scale computation and analytic methods. In doing so, we answer two open questions of Klostermeyer and Mynhardt. We show that the smallest graph having its eternal domination number less than its clique covering number has $10$ vertices. We determine the complete set of $10$-vertex and $11$-vertex graphs having eternal domination numbers less than their clique covering numbers. We show that the smallest triangle-free graph with this property has order $13$, as does the smal…
Institut für Mathematik, Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学数学研究所）；HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics and ELTE Eötvös Loránd University（匈牙利科学院阿尔弗雷德·雷尼数学研究所和布达佩斯罗兰大学）
The edge clique cover number $ecc(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the size of the smallest set of complete subgraphs whose union covers all edges of $G$. It has been conjectured that all the simple graphs with independence number two satisfy $ecc(G)\leq n$. First, we present a class of graphs containing edges difficult to cover but that satisfy the conjecture. Second, we describe a large class of graphs $G$ such that $ecc(G)\leq \frac{3}{2}n$. This class is easy to characterize.
Building on previous work of the author, for each finite triangle-free graph $\mathbf{G}$, we determine the equivalence relation on the copies of $\mathbf{G}$ inside the universal homogeneous triangle-free graph, $\mathcal{H}_3$, with the smallest number of equivalence classes so that each one of the classes persists in every isomorphic subcopy of $\mathcal{H}_3$. This characterizes the exact big Ramsey degrees of $\mathcal{H}_3$. It follows that the triangle-free Henson graph is a big Ramsey structure.
We give a simple characterisation of the distribution of the independence number, and equivalently the matching number, of a random tree on $n$ labelled vertices chosen uniformly among the $n^{n-2}$ such trees: Roll an $n$-sided die repeatedly, and let $α$ be the smallest number such that after $α$ throws, at least $n-α$ distinct numbers have occurred. Then $α$ has the same distribution as the independence number, and $n-α$ has the same distribution as the matching number. We obtain a similar characterisation of the path cover number. The proofs are bijective and based on modifications of the …
The triangle-free process begins with an empty graph on n vertices and iteratively adds edges chosen uniformly at random subject to the constraint that no triangle is formed. We determine the asymptotic number of edges in the maximal triangle-free graph at which the triangle-free process terminates. We also bound the independence number of this graph, which gives an improved lower bound on the Ramsey numbers R(3,t): we show R(3,t) > (1-o(1)) t^2 / (4 log t), which is within a 4+o(1) factor of the best known upper bound. Our improvement on previous analyses of this process exploits the self-cor…
One of Erdos's conjectures states that every triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices has an induced subgraph on $n/2$ vertices with at most $n^2/50$ edges. We report several partial results towards this conjecture. In particular, we establish the new bound $\frac{27}{1024}n^2$ on the number of edges in general case. We completely prove the conjecture for graphs of girth $\geq 5$, for graphs with independence number $\geq 2n/5$ and for strongly regular graphs. Each of these three classes includes both known (conjectured) extremal configurations, the 5-cycle and the Petersen graph.
A well-known conjecture of Tuza asserts that if a graph has at most $t$ pairwise edge-disjoint triangles, then it can be made triangle-free by removing at most $2t$ edges. If true, the factor 2 would be best possible. In the directed setting, also asked by Tuza, the analogous statement has recently been proven, however, the factor 2 is not optimal. In this paper, we show that if an $n$-vertex directed graph has at most $t$ pairwise arc-disjoint directed triangles, then there exists a set of at most $1.8t+o(n^2)$ arcs that meets all directed triangles. We complement our result by presenting two…
Given a permutation group $G$, the derangement graph $Γ_G$ of $G$ is the Cayley graph with connection set the set of all derangements of $G$. We prove that, when $G$ is transitive of degree at least $3$, $Γ_G$ contains a triangle. The motivation for this work is the question of how large can be the ratio of the independence number of $Γ_G$ to the size of the stabilizer of a point in $G$. We give examples of transitive groups where this ratio is maximum.
The independence number $α(G)$ and the dissociation number ${\rm diss}(G)$ of a graph $G$ are the largest orders of induced subgraphs of $G$ of maximum degree at most $0$ and at most $1$, respectively. We consider possible improvements of the obvious inequality $2α(G)\geq {\rm diss}(G)$. For connected cubic graphs $G$ distinct from $K_4$, we show $5α(G)\geq 3{\rm diss}(G)$, and describe the rich and interesting structure of the extremal graphs in detail. For bipartite graphs, and, more generally, triangle-free graphs, we also obtain improvements. For subcubic graphs though, the inequality cann…
The solitaire of independence is a groupoid action resembling the classical 15-puzzle, which gives information about independent sets of coordinates in a totally extremally permutive subshift. We study the solitaire with the triangle shape, which corresponds to the spacetime diagrams of bipermutive cellular automata with radius 1/2. We give a polynomial time algorithm that puts any finite subset of the plane in normal form using solitaire moves, and show that the solitaire orbit of a line of consecutive ones -- the line orbit -- is completely characterised by the notion of a fill matrix. We sh…
Let $α=α(G)$ be the independence number of a simple graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and $I(G)$ be its edge ideal in $S=K[x_1,\ldots, x_n]$. If $S/I(G)$ is Gorenstein, the graph $G$ is called Gorenstein over $K$ and if $G$ is Gorenstein over every field, then we simply say that $G$ is Gorenstein. In this article, first we state a condition equivalent to $G$ being Gorenstein and using this we give a characterization of Gorenstein graphs with $α=2$. Then we present some properties of Gorenstein graphs with $α=3$ and as an application of these results we characterize triangle-free Gorenstein graphs wi…
