To any graph we associate a sequence of integers called the gonality sequence of the graph, consisting of the minimum degrees of divisors of increasing rank on the graph. This is a tropical analogue of the gonality sequence of an algebraic curve. We study gonality sequences for graphs of low genus, proving that for genus up to $5$, the gonality sequence is determined by the genus and the first gonality. We then prove that any reasonable pair of first two gonalities is achieved by some graph. We also develop a modified version of Dhar's burning algorithm more suited for studying higher gonalities.
The divisorial gonality of a graph is the minimum degree of a positive rank divisor on that graph. We introduce the multiplicity-free gonality of a graph, which restricts our consideration to divisors that place at most \(1\) chip on each vertex. We give a sufficient condition in terms of vertex-connectivity for these two versions of gonality to be equal; and we show that no function of gonality can bound multiplicity-free gonality, even for simple graphs. We also prove that multiplicity-free gonality is NP-hard to compute, while still determining it for graph families for which gonality is cu…
We provide lower bounds on the gonality of a graph in terms of its spectral and edge expansion. As a consequence, we see that the gonality of a random 3-regular graph is asymptotically almost surely greater than one seventh its genus.
In 2013, Chan classified all metric hyperelliptic graphs, proving that divisorial gonality and geometric gonality are equivalent in the hyperelliptic case. We show that such a classification extends to combinatorial graphs of divisorial gonality three, under certain edge- and vertex-connectivity assumptions. We also give a construction for graphs of divisorial gonality three, and provide conditions for determining when a graph is not of divisorial gonality three.
In this paper we study Cartesian products of graphs and their divisorial gonality, which is a tropical version of the gonality of an algebraic curve. We present an upper bound on the gonality of the Cartesian product of any two graphs, and provide instances where this bound holds with equality, including for the $m\times n$ rook's graph with $\min\{m,n\}\leq 5$. We use our upper bound to prove that Baker's gonality conjecture holds for the Cartesian product of any two graphs with two or more vertices each, and we determine precisely which nontrivial product graphs have gonality equal to Baker'…
The gonality sequence $(γ_r)_{r\geq1}$ of a finite graph / metric graph / algebraic curve comprises the minimal degrees $γ_r$ of linear systems of rank $r$. For the complete graph $K_d$, we show that $γ_r = kd - h$ if $r<g=\frac{(d-1)(d-2)}{2}$, where $k$ and $h$ are the uniquely determined integers such that $r = \frac{k(k+3)}{2} - h$ with $1\leq k\leq d-3$ and $0 \leq h \leq k $. This shows that the graph $K_d$ has the gonality sequence of a smooth plane curve of degree $d$. The same result holds for the corresponding metric graphs.
In the theory of divisors on multigraphs, the $r^{th}$ divisorial gonality of a graph is the minimum degree of a rank $r$ divisor on that graph. It was proved by Gijswijt et al. that the first divisorial gonality of a finite graph is NP-hard to compute. We generalize their argument to prove that it is NP-hard to compute the $r^{th}$ divisorial gonality of a finite graph for all $r$. We use this result to prove that it is NP-hard to compute $r^{th}$ stable divisorial gonality for a finite graph, and to compute $r^{th}$ divisorial gonality for a metric graph. We also prove these problems are APX…
We prove new lower and upper bounds on the higher gonalities of finite graphs. These bounds are generalizations of known upper and lower bounds for first gonality to higher gonalities, including upper bounds on gonality involving independence number, and lower bounds on gonality by scramble number. We apply our bounds to study the computational complexity of computing higher gonalities, proving that it is NP-hard to compute the second gonality of a graph when restricting to multiplicity-free divisors.
Two dimensional rook graphs are the Cartesian product of two complete graphs. In this paper we prove that the gonality of these graphs is the expected value of $(n-1)m$ where $n$ is the size of the smaller complete graph and $m$ is the size of the larger. furthermore we compute the 2 and 3 gonalities of these graphs. We also explore the scramble number of these graphs, which is a new graph invariant and a lower bound on the gonality.
We define a new graph invariant called the scramble number. We show that the scramble number of a graph is a lower bound for the gonality and an upper bound for the treewidth. Unlike the treewidth, the scramble number is not minor monotone, but it is subgraph monotone and invariant under refinement. We compute the scramble number and gonality of several families of graphs for which these invariants are strictly greater than the treewidth.
Let $K_d$ be the complete metric graph on $d$ vertices. We compute the gonality of graphs obtained from $K_d$ by omitting edges forming a $K_h$, or general configurations of at most $d-2$ edges. We also investigate if these graphs can be lifted to curves with the same gonality. We lift the former graphs and the ones obtained by removing up to $d-2$ edges not forming a $K_3$ using models of plane curves with certain singularities. We also study the gonality when removing $d-1$ edges not forming a $K_3$. We use harmonic morphism to lift these graphs to curves with the same gonality because in th…
We consider a variant of metrised graphs where the edge lengths take values in a commutative monoid, as a higher-rank generalisation of the notion of a tropical curve. Divisorial gonality, which Baker and Norine defined on combinatorial graphs in terms of a chip firing game, is extended to these monoid-metrised graphs. We define geometric gonality of a monoid-metrised graph as the minimal degree of a horizontally conformal, non-degenerate morphism onto an monoid-metrised tree, and prove that geometric gonality is an upper bound for divisorial gonality in the monoid-metrised case. We also show …
We prove that in the moduli space of genus-g metric graphs the locus of graphs with gonality at most d has the classical dimension min{3g-3,2g+2d-5}. This follows from a careful parameter count to establish the upper bound and a construction of sufficiently many graphs with gonality at most d to establish the lower bound. Here, gonality is the minimal degree of a non-degenerate harmonic map to a tree that satisfies the Riemann-Hurwitz condition everywhere. Along the way, we establish a convenient combinatorial datum capturing such harmonic maps to trees.
This paper compares the divisorial gonality of a finite graph $G$ to the divisorial gonality of the associated metric graph $Γ(G,\mathbb{1})$ with unit lengths. We show that $\text{dgon}(Γ(G,\mathbb{1}))$ is equal to the minimal divisorial gonality of all regular subdivisions of $G$, and we provide a class of graphs for which this number is strictly smaller than the divisorial gonality of $G$. This settles a conjecture of M. Baker in the negative.
We examine connections between the gonality, treewidth, and orientable genus of a graph. Especially, we find that hyperelliptic graphs in the sense of Baker and Norine are planar. We give a notion of a bielliptic graph and show that each of these must embed into a closed orientable surface of genus one. We also find, for all $g\ge 0$, trigonal graphs of treewidth 3 and orientable genus $g$, and give analogues for graphs of higher gonality.
We study the interplay between the classical theory of linear series on curves, and the recent theory of linear series on graphs. We prove that every d-gonal (weighted) graph of Hurwitz type is the dual graph of a d-gonal curve. Conversely the dual graph of a d-gonal curve is equivalent to a d-gonal graph. We define d-gonal graphs by what we call harmonic indexed morphisms. Generalizations to higher dimensional linear series, and applications to tropical curves and hyperelliptic graphs are given.
By considering graphs as discrete analogues of Riemann surfaces, Baker and Norine (Adv. Math. 2007) developed a concept of linear systems of divisors for graphs. Building on this idea, a concept of gonality for graphs has been defined and has generated much recent interest. We show that there are connected graphs of treewidth 2 of arbitrarily high gonality. We also show that there exist pairs of connected graphs $\{G,H\}$ such that $H\subseteq G$ and $H$ has strictly lower gonality than $G$. These results resolve three open problems posed in a recent survey by Norine (Surveys in Combinatorics …
We compute the treewidth of a family of graphs we refer to as the glued grids, consisting of the stacked prism graphs and the toroidal grids. Our main technique is constructing strict brambles of large orders. We discuss connections to divisorial graph theory coming from tropical geometry, and use our results to compute the divisorial gonality of these graphs.
The scramble number of a graph is an invariant recently developed to aid in the study of divisorial gonality. In this paper we prove that scramble number is NP-hard to compute, also providing a proof that computing gonality is NP-hard even for simple graphs, as well as for metric graphs. We also provide general lower bounds for the scramble number of a Cartesian product of graphs, and apply these to compute gonality for many new families of product graphs.
There are several notions of gonality for graphs. The divisorial gonality dgon(G) of a graph G is the smallest degree of a divisor of positive rank in the sense of Baker-Norine. The stable gonality sgon(G) of a graph G is the minimum degree of a finite harmonic morphism from a refinement of G to a tree, as defined by Cornelissen, Kato and Kool. We show that computing dgon(G) and sgon(G) are NP-hard by a reduction from the maximum independent set problem and the vertex cover problem, respectively. Both constructions show that computing gonality is moreover APX-hard.
We prove that the (divisorial) gonality of a finite connected graph is lower bounded by its treewidth. We show that equality holds for grid graphs and complete multipartite graphs. We prove that the treewidth lower bound also holds for \emph{metric graphs} by constructing for any positive rank divisor on a metric graph $Γ$ a positive rank divisor of the same degree on a subdivision of the underlying graph. Finally, we show that the treewidth lower bound also holds for a related notion of gonality defined by Caporaso and for stable gonality as introduced by Cornelissen et al.
California State University, Fullerton(富尔顿加州州立大学);Fort Valley State University(福尔特谷州立大学);University of Texas at Tyler(泰勒德州大学);University of Kentucky(肯塔基大学)
In this paper, we give a constructive proof of the fact that the treewidth of a graph is at most its divisorial gonality. The proof gives a polynomial time algorithm to construct a tree decomposition of width at most $k$, when an effective divisor of degree $k$ that reaches all vertices is given. We also give a similar result for two related notions: stable divisorial gonality and stable gonality.
Divisorial gonality and stable divisorial gonality are graph parameters, which have an origin in algebraic geometry. Divisorial gonality of a connected graph $G$ can be defined with help of a chip firing game on $G$. The stable divisorial gonality of $G$ is the minimum divisorial gonality over all subdivisions of edges of $G$. In this paper we prove that deciding whether a given connected graph has stable divisorial gonality at most a given integer $k$ belongs to the class NP. Combined with the result that (stable) divisorial gonality is NP-hard by Gijswijt, we obtain that stable divisorial go…
Let $Γ$ be a compact metric graph, and denote by $Δ$ the Laplace operator on $Γ$ with the first non-trivial eigenvalue $λ_1$. We prove the following Yang-Li-Yau type inequality on divisorial gonality $γ_{div}$ of $Γ$. There is a universal constant $C$ such that \[γ_{div}(Γ) \geq C \frac{μ(Γ) . \ell_{\min}^{\mathrm{geo}}(Γ). λ_1(Γ)}{d_{\max}},\] where the volume $μ(Γ)$ is the total length of the edges in $Γ$, $\ell_{\min}^{\mathrm{geo}}$ is the minimum length of all the geodesic paths between points of $Γ$ of valence different from two, and $d_{\max}$ is the largest valence of points of $Γ$. Al…
Recently, a new set of multigraph parameters was defined, called "gonalities". Gonality bears some similarity to treewidth, and is a relevant graph parameter for problems in number theory and multigraph algorithms. Multigraphs of gonality 1 are trees. We consider so-called "hyperelliptic graphs" (multigraphs of gonality 2) and provide a safe and complete sets of reduction rules for such multigraphs, showing that for three of the flavors of gonality, we can recognize hyperelliptic graphs in O(n log n+m) time, where n is the number of vertices and m the number of edges of the multigraph.
The scramble number of a graph is an invariant recently developed to study chip-firing games and divisorial gonality. In this paper we introduce the screewidth of a graph, based on a variation of the existing literature on tree-cut decompositions. We prove that this invariant serves as an upper bound on scramble number, though they are not always equal. We study properties of screewidth, and present results and conjectures on its connection to divisorial gonality.
We show that some natural problems that are XNLP-hard (which implies W[t]-hardness for all t) when parameterized by pathwidth or treewidth, become FPT when parameterized by stable gonality, a novel graph parameter based on optimal maps from graphs to trees. The problems we consider are classical flow and orientation problems, such as Undirected Flow with Lower Bounds (which is strongly NP-complete, as shown by Itai), Minimum Maximum Outdegree (for which W[1]-hardness for treewidth was proven by Szeider), and capacitated optimization problems such as Capacitated (Red-Blue) Dominating Set (for w…
We give a combinatorial upper bound for the gonality of a curve that is defined by a bivariate Laurent polynomial with given Newton polygon. We conjecture that this bound is generically attained, and provide proofs in a considerable number of special cases. One proof technique uses recent work of M. Baker on linear systems on graphs, by means of which we reduce our conjecture to a purely combinatorial statement.
We investigate the tree gonality of a genus-$g$ metric graph, defined as the minimum degree of a tropical morphism from any tropical modification of the metric graph to a metric tree. We give a combinatorial constructive proof that this number is at most $\lceil g/2 \rceil + 1$, a fact whose proofs so far required an algebro-geometric detour via special divisors on curves. For even genus, the tropical morphism which realizes the bound belongs to a family of tropical morphisms that is pure of dimension $3g-3$ and that has a generically finite-to-one map onto the moduli space of genus-$g$ metric…
In this paper we relate a fundamental parameter of a random graph, its degree sequence, to a simple model of nearly independent binomial random variables. This confirms a conjecture made in 1997. As a result, many interesting functions of the joint distribution of graph degrees, such as the distribution of the median degree, become amenable to estimation. Our result is established by proving an asymptotic formula conjectured in 1990 for the number of graphs with given degree sequence. In particular, this gives an asymptotic formula for the number of $d$-regular graphs for all $d$, as $n\to\inf…
For given a graph $H$, a graphic sequence $π=(d_1,d_2,...,d_n)$ is said to be potentially $H$-graphic if there exists a realization of $π$ containing $H$ as a subgraph. In this paper, we characterize the potentially $K_6-C_5$ -graphic sequences.
Many degree sequences can only be realised in graphs that contain a `ds-completable card', defined as a vertex-deleted subgraph in which the erstwhile neighbours of the deleted vertex can be identified from their degrees, if one knows the degree sequence of the original graph. We obtain conditions on the degree sequence, such that graphs whose degree sequence satisfies one of the conditions must contain such a card. The methods allow all such sequences on graphs of order up to 10 to be identified, and some fraction of the sequences for larger graphs. Among other applications, this can be used …
For given a graph $H$, a graphic sequence $π=(d_1,d_2,...,d_n)$ is said to be potentially $H$-graphic if there exists a realization of $π$ containing $H$ as a subgraph. In this paper, we characterize the potentially $H$-graphic sequences where $H$ denotes 3-regular graph with 6 vertices. In other words, we characterize the potentially $K_{3,3}$ and $K_6-C_6$-graphic sequences where $K_{r,r}$ is an $r\times r$ complete bipartite graph. One of these characterizations implies a theorem due to Yin [25].
A construction of Alon yields a sequence of highly pseudorandom triangle-free graphs with edge density significantly higher than one might expect from comparison with random graphs. We give an alternative construction for such graphs.
A graph is called primitive if its automorphism group acts primitively on the vertex set. In this paper, we prove a classification of the possible distance sequences of locally infinite primitive graphs. In particular we show that if a primitive graph is locally uncountable, the distance sequence is constant until it terminates. We also prove a constraint on the distance sequences of locally finite infinite graphs.
We determine the degree sequence of the generalized Sierpinski graph and its general first Zagreb index in terms of the same parameters of the base graph G.
The degree sequence of a graph is a numerical method to characterize the properties of graphs. Generalized forms of degree sequences exist for complete graphs and complete graphs. Nikolopolus et al. characterized the number of spanning trees from edge deletions and edge additions. Instead of investigating the number of spanning trees of graphs that arise from edge additions and deletions, we sought to characterize degree sequences of such graphs. We conjecture a characterization for the degree sequence of the addition and edge deletion for many families of graphs including threshold graphs and…
A sequence of nonnegative integers $π$ is {\it graphic} if it is the degree sequence of some graph $G$. In this case we say that $G$ is a \textit{realization} of $π$, and we write $π=π(G)$. A graphic sequence $π$ is {\it potentially $H$-graphic} if there is a realization of $π$ that contains $H$ as a subgraph. Given nonincreasing graphic sequences $π_1=(d_1,\ldots,d_n)$ and $π_2 = (s_1,\ldots,s_n)$, we say that $π_1$ {\it majorizes} $π_2$ if $d_i \geq s_i$ for all $i$, $1 \leq i \leq n$. In 1970, Erdős showed that for any $K_{r+1}$-free graph $H$, there exists an $r$-partite graph $G$ such tha…
The second Zagreb index of a graph G is denoted by $M_2(G)=\sum_{uv\in E(G)}d(u)d(v)$. In this paper, we investigate properties of the extremal graphs with the maximum second Zagreb indices with given graphic sequences, in particular graphic bicyclic sequences. Moreover, we obtain the relations of the second Zagreb indices among the extremal graphs with different degree sequences.
This note describes necessary and sufficient conditions for a sequence of positive integers to be the degree sequence of a connected simple graph. Conditions are also given under which a sequence is necessarily connected i.e. the sequence can only be realised as a connected graph. A matrix is introduced whose non-empty entries partition the set of connected graphs. The note concludes with a result relating the number of edges in a simple graph to the connectedness of the graph.
Necessary and sufficient conditions for a sequence of positive integers to be the degree sequence of a 3-connected simple graph are detailed. Conditions are also given under which such a sequence is necessarily 3-connected i.e. the sequence can only be realised as a 3-connected graph. Finally, a matrix is introduced whose non-empty entries partition the set of 3-connected graphs.
We introduce fractional realizations of a graph degree sequence and a closely associated convex polytope. Simple graph realizations correspond to a subset of the vertices of this polytope. We describe properties of the polytope vertices and characterize degree sequences for which each polytope vertex corresponds to a simple graph realization. These include the degree sequences of pseudo-split graphs, and we characterize their realizations both in terms of forbidden subgraphs and graph structure.
Given the degree sequence $d$ of a graph, the realization graph of $d$ is the graph having as its vertices the labeled realizations of $d$, with two vertices adjacent if one realization may be obtained from the other via an edge-switching operation. We describe a connection between Cartesian products in realization graphs and the canonical decomposition of degree sequences described by R.I. Tyshkevich and others. As applications, we characterize the degree sequences whose realization graphs are triangle-free graphs or hypercubes.