Bollobás and Riordan, in their paper "Metrics for sparse graphs," proposed a number of provocative conjectures extending central results of quasirandom graphs and graph limits to sparse graphs. We refute these conjectures by exhibiting a sequence of graphs with convergent normalized subgraph densities (and pseudorandom $C_4$-counts), but with no limit expressible as a kernel.
We establish a relation between the Bollobas-Riordan polynomial of a ribbon graph with the relative Tutte polynomial of a plane graph obtained from the ribbon graph using its projection to the plane in a nontrivial way. Also we give a duality formula for the relative Tutte polynomial of dual plane graphs and an expression of the Kauffman bracket of a virtual link as a specialization of the relative Tutte polynomial.
Recently S. Chmutov introduced a generalization of the dual of a ribbon (or embedded) graph and proved a relation between Bollobas and Riordan's ribbon graph polynomial of a ribbon graph and its generalized duals. Here I show that the duality relation satisfied by the ribbon graph polynomial can be understood in terms of knot theory and I give a simple proof of the relation via the homfly polynomial of a knot.
We define 2-decompositions of ribbon graphs, which generalise 2-sums and tensor products of graphs. We give formulae for the Bollobas-Riordan polynomial of such a 2-decomposition, and derive the classical Brylawski formula for the Tutte polynomial of a tensor product as a (very) special case. This study was initially motivated from knot theory, and we include an application of our formulae to mutation in knot diagrams.
We prove that the distribution of second degrees in the Bollobás--Riordan random graph model obeys the power law. We consider the model with parameter m = 1 (the number of edges equals the number of nodes).
In [A polynomial invariant of graphs on orientable surfaces, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., III Ser. 83, No. 3, 513-531 (2001)] and [A polynomial of graphs on surfaces, Math. Ann. 323, 81-96 (2002)], Bollobas and Riordan generalized the classical Tutte polynomial to graphs cellularly embedded in surfaces, i.e. ribbon graphs, thus encoding topological information not captured by the classical Tutte polynomial. We provide a `recipe theorem' for their new topological Tutte polynomial, R(G). We then relate R(G) to the generalized transition polynomial Q(G) via a medial graph construction, thus extending …
We generalize the natural duality of graphs embedded into a surface to a duality with respect to a subset of edges. The dual graph might be embedded into a different surface. We prove a relation between the signed Bollobas-Riordan polynomials of dual graphs. This relation unifies various recent results expressing the Jones polynomial of links as specializations of the Bollobas-Riordan polynomials.
For a ribbon graph $G$ we consider an alternating link $L_G$ in the 3-manifold $G\times I$ represented as the product of the oriented surface $G$ and the unit interval $I$. We show that the Kauffman bracket $[L_G]$ is an evaluation of the recently introduced Bollobas-Riordan polynomial $R_G$. This results generalizes the celebrated relation between Kauffman bracket and Tutte polynomial of planar graphs.
For a graph G embedded in an orientable surface Σ, we consider associated links L(G) in the thickened surface Σ\times I. We relate the HOMFLY polynomial of L(G) to the recently defined Bollobas-Riordan polynomial of a ribbon graph. This generalizes celebrated results of Jaeger and Traldi. We use knot theory to prove results about graph polynomials and, after discussing questions of equivalence of the polynomials, we go on to use our formulae to prove a duality relation for the Bollobas-Riordan polynomial. We then consider the specialization to the Jones polynomial and recent results of Chmutov…
Oriented ribbon graphs (dessins d'enfant) are graphs embedded in oriented surfaces. The Bollobás-Riordan-Tutte polynomial is a three-variable polynomial that extends the Tutte polynomial to oriented ribbon graphs. A quasi-tree of a ribbon graph is a spanning subgraph with one face, which is described by an ordered chord diagram. We generalize the spanning tree expansion of the Tutte polynomial to a quasi-tree expansion of the Bollobás-Riordan-Tutte polynomial.
The Bollobás-Riordan polynomial [Math. Ann. 323, 81 (2002)] is a universal polynomial invariant for ribbon graphs. We find an extension of this polynomial for a particular family of combinatorial objects, called rank 3 weakly-colored stranded graphs. Stranded graphs arise in the study of tensor models for quantum gravity in physics, and generalize graphs and ribbon graphs. We present a seven-variable polynomial invariant of these graphs, which obeys a contraction/deletion recursion relation similar to that of the Tutte and Bollobás-Riordan polynomials. However, it is defined on a much broader …
We show that the Kauffman bracket $[L]$ of a checkerboard colorable virtual link $L$ is an evaluation of the Bollobás-Riordan polynomial $R_{G_L}$ of a ribbon graph associated with $L$. This result generalizes Thistlethwaite's celebrated theorem relating the Kauffman bracket with the Tutte polynomial of planar graphs.
Tensor models are used nowadays for implementing a fundamental theory of quantum gravity. We define here a polynomial $\mathcal T$ encoding the supplementary topological information. This polynomial is a natural generalization of the Bollobás-Riordan polynomial (used to characterize matrix graphs) and is different of the Gur\uau polynomial, (R. Gur\uau, "Topological Graph Polynomials in Colored Group Field Theory", Annales Henri Poincare {\bf 11}, 565-584 (2010)) defined for a particular class of tensor graphs, the colorable ones. The polynomial $\mathcal T$ is defined for both colorable and n…
Bollobás-Riordan random pairing model of a preferential attachment graph $G_m^n$ is studied. Let $\{W_j\}_{j\le mn+1}$ be the process of sums of independent exponentials with mean $1$. We prove that the degrees of the first $ν_m^n:=n^{\frac{m}{m+2}-ε}$ vertices are jointly, and uniformly, asymptotic to $\{2(mn)^{1/2}\bigl(W^{1/2}_{mj}-W^{1/2}_{m(j-1)}\bigr)\}_{j\in [t]}$, and that with high probability (whp) the smallest of these degrees is $n^{\frac{ε(m+2)}{2m}}$, at least. In contrast, the degrees of vertices below the top by any fraction of $n$ are whp of $O(\log n)$ order. Next we bound th…
The Bollobas-Riordan polynomial [Math. Ann. 323, 81 (2002)] extends the Tutte polynomial and its contraction/deletion rule for ordinary graphs to ribbon graphs. Given a ribbon graph $\cG$, the related polynomial should be computable from the knowledge of the terminal forms of $\cG$ namely specific induced graphs for which the contraction/deletion procedure becomes more involved. We consider some classes of terminal forms as rosette ribbon graphs with $N\ge 1$ petals and solve their associate Bollobas-Riordan polynomial. This work therefore enlarges the list of terminal forms for ribbon graphs …
Recently, in the paper \cite{CJKM1} we suggested the two conjectures about the diameter of io-decomposable Riordan graphs of the Bell type. In this paper, we give a counterexample for the first conjecture. Then we prove that the first conjecture is true for the graphs of some particular size and propose a new conjecture. Finally, we show that the second conjecture is true for some special io-decomposable Riordan graphs.
We prove that any involution-invariant probability measure on the space of trees with maximum degrees at most d arises as the local limit of a convergent large girth graph sequence. This answers a question of Bollobas and Riordan.
We introduce an additional structure on ribbon graphs, arrow structure. We extend the Bollobás-Riordan polynomial to ribbon graph with this structure. The extended polynomial satisfies the contraction-deletion relations and naturally behaves with respect to the partial duality of ribbon graphs. We construct an arrow ribbon graph from a virtual link whose extended Bollobás-Riordan polynomial specializes to the arrow polynomial of the virtual link recently introduced by H.Dye and L.Kauffman. This result generalizes the classical Thistlethwaite theorem to the arrow polynomial of virtual links.
We provide recipe theorems for the Bollobàs and Riordan polynomial $\mathcal{R}$ defined on classes of ribbon graphs with half-edges introduced in arXiv:1310.3708[math.GT]. We also define a generalized transition polynomial $Q$ on this new category of ribbon graphs and establish a relationship between $Q$ and $\mathcal{R}$.
Graph-bootstrap percolation, also known as weak saturation, was introduced by Bollobás in 1968. In this process, we start with initial "infected" set of edges $E_0$, and we infect new edges according to a predetermined rule. Given a graph $H$ and a set of previously infected edges $E_t\subseteq E(K_n)$, we infect a non-infected edge $e$ if it completes a new copy of $H$ in $G=([n],E_t\cup e)$. A question raised by Bollobás asks for the maximum time the process can run before it stabilizes. Bollobás, Przykucki, Riordan, and Sahasrabudhe considered this problem for the most natural case where $H…
We develop a general framework to prove Kraft-type inequalities for prefix-free permutation codes for source coding with various notions of permutation code and prefix. We also show that the McMillan-type converse theorem in most of these cases does not hold, and give a general form of a counterexample. Our approach is more general and works for other structures besides permutation codes. The classical Kraft inequality for prefix-free codes as well as results about permutation codes follow as corollaries of our main theorem and main counterexample.
Let W_n(p,q) denote the minimum number of edges in an n x n bipartite graph G on vertex sets X,Y that satisfies the following condition; one can add the edges between X and Y that do not belong to G one after the other so that whenever a new edge is added, a new copy of K_{p,q} is created. The problem of bounding W_n(p,q), and its natural hypergraph generalization, was introduced by Balogh, Bollobás, Morris and Riordan. Their main result, specialized to graphs, used algebraic methods to determine W_n(1,q). Our main results in this paper give exact bounds for W_n(p,q), its hypergraph analogue, …
We follow the example of Tutte in his construction of the dichromate of a graph (that is, the Tutte polynomial) as a unification of the chromatic polynomial and the flow polynomial in order to construct a new polynomial invariant of maps (graphs embedded in orientable surfaces). We call this the surface Tutte polynomial. The surface Tutte polynomial of a map contains the Las Vergnas polynomial, Bollobás-Riordan polynomial and Kruskhal polynomial as specializations. By construction, the surface Tutte polynomial includes among its evaluations the number of local tensions and local flows taking v…
Bollobás and Scott [5] conjectured that every graph $G$ has a balanced bipartite spanning subgraph $H$ such that for each $v\in V(G)$, $d_H(v)\ge (d_G(v)-1)/2$. In this paper, we show that every graphic sequence has a realization for which this Bollobás-Scott conjecture holds, confirming a conjecture of Hartke and Seacrest [10]. On the other hand, we give an infinite family of counterexamples to this Bollobás-Scott conjecture, which indicates that $\lfloor (d_G(v)-1)/2\rfloor$ (rather than $(d_G(v)-1)/2$) is probably the correct lower bound. We also study bipartitions $V_1, V_2$ of graphs with…
The colored neighborhood metric for sparse graphs was introduced by Bollobás and Riordan. The corresponding convergence notion refines a convergence notion introduced by Benjamini and Schramm. We prove that even in this refined sense, the limit of a convergent graph sequence (with uniformly bounded degree) can be represented by a graphing. We study various topics related to this convergence notion such as: Bernoulli graphings, factor of i.i.d. processes and hyperfiniteness.
We study the problem of coupling a stochastic block model with a planted bisection to a uniform random graph having the same average degree. Focusing on the regime where the average degree is a constant relative to the number of vertices $n$, we show that the distance to which the models can be coupled undergoes a phase transition from $O(\sqrt{n})$ to $Ω(n)$ as the planted bisection in the block model varies. This settles half of a conjecture of Bollobás and Riordan and has some implications for sparse graph limit theory. In particular, for certain ranges of parameters, a block model and the …
We introduce and develop a theory of limits for sequences of sparse graphs based on $L^p$ graphons, which generalizes both the existing $L^\infty$ theory of dense graph limits and its extension by Bollobás and Riordan to sparse graphs without dense spots. In doing so, we replace the no dense spots hypothesis with weaker assumptions, which allow us to analyze graphs with power law degree distributions. This gives the first broadly applicable limit theory for sparse graphs with unbounded average degrees. In this paper, we lay the foundations of the $L^p$ theory of graphons, characterize converge…
In this paper we study the component structure of random graphs with independence between the edges. Under mild assumptions, we determine whether there is a giant component, and find its asymptotic size when it exists. We assume that the sequence of matrices of edge probabilities converges to an appropriate limit object (a kernel), but only in a very weak sense, namely in the cut metric. Our results thus generalize previous results on the phase transition in the already very general inhomogeneous random graph model we introduced recently, as well as related results of Bollobás, Borgs, Chayes a…
In this paper we determine the percolation threshold for an arbitrary sequence of dense graphs $(G_n)$. Let $λ_n$ be the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of $G_n$, and let $G_n(p_n)$ be the random subgraph of $G_n$ obtained by keeping each edge independently with probability $p_n$. We show that the appearance of a giant component in $G_n(p_n)$ has a sharp threshold at $p_n=1/λ_n$. In fact, we prove much more: if $(G_n)$ converges to an irreducible limit, then the density of the largest component of $G_n(c/n)$ tends to the survival probability of a multi-type branching process defined…
In this paper, we study some important statistics of the random graph in the Buckley-Osthus model. This model is a modification of the well-known Bollobás-Riordan model. We denote the number of nodes by t, the so-called initial attractiveness of a node by a. First, we find a new asymptotic formula for the expectation of the number R(d,t) of nodes of a given degree d in a graph in this model. Such a formula is known for positive integer values of a and d \le t^{1/100(a+1)}. Both restrictions are unsatisfactory from theoretical and practical points of view. We completely remove them. Then we cal…
Recently, Bollobás, Janson and Riordan introduced a family of random graph models producing inhomogeneous graphs with $n$ vertices and $Θ(n)$ edges whose distribution is characterized by a kernel, i.e., a symmetric measurable function $\ka:[0,1]^2 \to [0,\infty)$. To understand these models, we should like to know when different kernels $\ka$ give rise to `similar' graphs, and, given a real-world network, how `similar' is it to a typical graph $G(n,\ka)$ derived from a given kernel $\ka$. The analogous questions for dense graphs, with $Θ(n^2)$ edges, are answered by recent results of Borgs, Ch…
Motivated by applications, the last few years have witnessed tremendous interest in understanding the structure as well as the behavior of dynamics for inhomogeneous random graph models. In this study we analyze the maximal components at criticality of one famous class of such models, the rank-one inhomogeneous random graph model. Viewing these components as measured random metric spaces, under finite moment assumptions for the weight distribution, we show that the components in the critical scaling window with distances scaled by $n^{-1/3}$ converge in the Gromov-Haussdorf-Prokhorov metric to…
Recently, Bollobás, Janson and Riordan introduced a very general family of random graph models, producing inhomogeneous random graphs with $Θ(n)$ edges. Roughly speaking, there is one model for each {\em kernel}, i.e., each symmetric measurable function from $[0,1]^2$ to the non-negative reals, although the details are much more complicated. A different connection between kernels and random graphs arises in the recent work of Borgs, Chayes, Lovász, Sós, Szegedy and Vesztergombi. They introduced several natural metrics on dense graphs (graphs with $n$ vertices and $Θ(n^2)$ edges), showed that t…