Let $F(G)$ be the number of forests of a graph $G$. Similarly let $C(G)$ be the number of connected spanning subgraphs of a connected graph $G$. We bound $F(G)$ and $C(G)$ for regular graphs and for graphs with fixed average degree. Among many other things we study $f_d=\sup_{G\in \mathcal{G}_d}F(G)^{1/v(G)}$, where $\mathcal{G}_d$ is the family of $d$--regular graphs, and $v(G)$ denotes the number of vertices of a graph $G$. We show that $f_3=2^{3/2}$, and if $(G_n)_n$ is a sequence of $3$--regular graphs with length of the shortest cycle tending to infinity, then $\lim_{n\to \infty}F(G_n)^{1/v(G_n)}=2^{3/2}$. We also improve on the previous best bounds on $f_d$ for $4\leq d\leq 9$.
The Ascending Subgraph Decomposition (ASD) Conjecture asserts that every graph $G$ with ${n+1\choose 2}$ edges admits an edge decomposition $G=H_1\oplus\cdots \oplus H_n$ such that $H_i$ has $i$ edges and it is isomorphic to a subgraph of $H_{i+1}$, $i=1,\ldots ,n-1$. We show that every bipartite graph $G$ with ${n+1\choose 2}$ edges such that the degree sequence $d_1,\ldots ,d_k$ of one of the stable sets satisfies $ d_{k-i}\ge n-i\; \text{for each}\; 0\le i\le k-1,$, admits an ascending subgraph decomposition with star forests. We also give a necessary condition on the degree sequence which …
We describe a general approach of determining the distribution of spanning subgraphs in the random graph $\G(n,p)$. In particular, we determine the distribution of spanning subgraphs of certain given degree sequences, which is a generalisation of the $d$-factors, of spanning triangle-free subgraphs, of (directed) Hamilton cycles and of spanning subgraphs that are isomorphic to a collection of vertex disjoint (directed) triangles.
We classify connected spanning convex subgraphs of the square cycles. We then show that every spanning tree of $C_n^2$ is contained in a unique nontrivial connected spanning convex subgraph of $C_n^2$. As a result, we obtain a purely combinatorial derivation of the formula for the number of spanning trees of the square cycles.
Rigidity, arising in discrete geometry, is the property of a structure that does not flex. Laman provides a combinatorial characterization of rigid graphs in the Euclidean plane, and thus rigid graphs in the Euclidean plane have applications in graph theory. We discover a sufficient partition condition of packing spanning rigid subgraphs and spanning trees. As a corollary, we show that a simple graph $G$ contains a packing of $k$ spanning rigid subgraphs and $l$ spanning trees if $G$ is $(4k+2l)$-edge-connected, and $G-Z$ is essentially $(6k+2l - 2k|Z|)$-edge-connected for every $Z\subset V(G)…
Let G be a simple balanced bipartite graph on $2n$ vertices, $δ= δ(G)/n$, and $ρ={δ+ \sqrt{2 δ-1} \over 2}$. If $δ> 1/2$ then it has a $\lfloor ρn \rfloor$-regular spanning subgraph. The statement is nearly tight.
In 2009, Bang-Jensen asked whether there exists a function $g(k)$ such that every strongly $k$-connected $n$-vertex tournament contains a strongly $k$-connected spanning subgraph with at most $kn + g(k)$ arcs. In this paper, we answer the question by showing that every strongly $k$-connected $n$-vertex tournament contains a strongly $k$-connected spanning subgraph with at most $kn + 750k^2\log(k+1)$ arcs.
The classical Dodgson identity can be interpreted as a quadratic identity of spanning forest polynomials, where the spanning forests used in each polynomial are defined by how three marked vertices are divided among the component trees. We prove an analogous result with four marked vertices.
The Turán type extremal problem asks to maximize the number of edges over all graphs which do not contain fixed subgraphs. Similarly, the spectral Turán type extremal problem asks to maximize spectral radius of all graphs which do not contain fixed subgraphs. In this paper, we determine the maximum spectral radius of all graphs without containing a linear forest as a subgraph and characterize all corresponding extremal graphs. In addition, the maximum number of edges and spectral radius of all bipartite graphs without containing $k\cdot P_3$ as a subgraph are obtained and all extremal graphs a…
We give some insight into Tutte's definition of internally and externally active edges for spanning forests. Namely we prove, that every edge subset can be constructed from the edges of exactly one spanning forest by deleting a unique subset of the internally active edges and adding a unique subset of the externally active edges.
This paper discusses the enumeration for the total number of all rooted spanning forests of the labeled complete tripartite graph. We enumerate the total number by a combinatorial decomposition.
Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a family of fixed graphs and let $d$ be large enough. For every $d$-regular graph $G$, we study the existence of a spanning $\mathcal{F}$-free subgraph of $G$ with large minimum degree. This problem is well-understood if $\mathcal{F}$ does not contain bipartite graphs. Here we provide asymptotically tight results for many families of bipartite graphs such as cycles or complete bipartite graphs.
We provide new evidence that spanning forests of graphs satisfy the same negative correlation properties as spanning trees, derived from Lord Rayleigh's monotonicity property for electrical networks. The main result of this paper is that the Rayleigh difference for the spanning forest generating polynomial of a series parallel graph can be expressed as a certain positive sum of monomials times squares of polynomials. We also show that every regular matroid is independent-set-Rayleigh if and only if every basis-Rayleigh binary matroid is also independent-set-Rayleigh.
Let $G$ be a graph and let $l$ be an integer-valued function on subsets of $V(G)$. The graph $G$ is said to be $l$-partition-connected, if for every partition $P$ of $V(G)$, $e_G(P)\ge \sum_{A\in P} l(A)-l(V(G))$, where $e_G(P)$ denotes the number of edges of $G$ joining different parts of $P$. We say that $G$ is $l$-rigid, if it contains a spanning $l$-partition-connected subgraph $H$ with $|E(H)|=\sum_{v\in V(H)} l(v)-l(V(H))$. In this paper, we investigate decomposition of graphs into spanning partition-connected and spanning rigid subgraphs. As a consequence, we improve a recent result due…
In this article, we extend Moon's classic formula for counting spanning trees in complete graphs containing a fixed spanning forest to complete bipartite graphs. Let $(X,Y)$ be the bipartition of the complete bipartite graph $K_{m,n}$ with $|X|=m$ and $|Y|=n$. We prove that for any given spanning forest $F$ of $K_{m,n}$ with components $T_1,T_2,\ldots,T_k$, the number of spanning trees in $K_{m,n}$ which contain all edges in $F$ is equal to $$ \frac 1{mn}\left(\prod_{i=1}^k (m_in+n_im)\right) \left (1-\sum_{i=1}^{k}\frac{m_in_i}{m_in+n_im}\right ), $$ where $m_i=|V(T_i)\cap X|$ and $n_i=|V(T_i…
We consider all spanning trees of a complete simple graph $Γ$ on $n$ vertices that contain a given $m-$forest $F$. We show that the number of such spanning trees, $τ(F)$, doesn't depend on the structure of $F$ and is completely determined by the number of vertices $q_i \, (i=1, ..., m)$ in each connected component of $F$. Specifically, $τ(F) = q_1 q_2 \cdots q_m n^{m-2}$.
We call a subgraph of an edge-colored graph rainbow subgraph, if all of its edges have different colors. The anti-Ramsey number of a graph $G$ in a complete graph $K_{n}$, denoted by $ar(K_{n}, G)$, is the maximum number of colors in an edge-coloring of $K_{n}$ with no rainbow subgraph copy of $G$. In this paper, we determine the exact value of the anti-Ramsey number for star forests and the approximate value of the anti-Ramsey number for linear forests. Furthermore, we compute the exact value of $ar(K_{n}, 2P_{4})$ for $n\ge 8$ and $ar(K_{n}, S_{p,q})$ for large $n$, where $S_{p,q}$ is the do…
A spanning 2-forest separating vertices $u$ and $v$ of an undirected connected graph is a spanning forest with 2 components such that $u$ and $v$ are in distinct components. Aside from their combinatorial significance, spanning 2-forests have an important application to the calculation of resistance distance or effective resistance. The resistance distance between vertices $u$ and $v$ in a graph representing an electrical circuit with unit resistance on each edge is the number of spanning 2-forests separating $u$ and $v$ divided by the number of spanning trees in the graph. There are also well…
The Heilmann-Lieb Theorem on (univariate) matching polynomials states that the polynomial $\sum_k m_k(G) y^k$ has only real nonpositive zeros, in which $m_k(G)$ is the number of $k$-edge matchings of a graph $G$. There is a stronger multivariate version of this theorem. We provide a general method by which ``theorems of Heilmann-Lieb type'' can be proved for a wide variety of polynomials attached to the graph $G$. These polynomials are multivariate generating functions for spanning subgraphs of $G$ with certain weights and constraints imposed, and the theorems specify regions in which these po…
Let $G$ be an $n$-vertex graph with $n\ge 3$. A classic result of Dirac from 1952 asserts that $G$ is hamiltonian if $δ(G)\ge n/2$. Dirac's theorem is one of the most influential results in the study of hamiltonicity and by now there are many related known results\,(see, e.g., J. A. Bondy, Basic Graph Theory: Paths and Circuits, Chapter 1 in: {\it Handbook of Combinatorics Vol.1}). A {\it Halin graph} is a planar graph consisting of two edge-disjoint subgraphs: a spanning tree of at least 4 vertices and with no vertex of degree 2, and a cycle induced on the set of the leaves of the spanning tr…
Nearly-uniform degree distributions in spanning subgraphs
Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick（华威大学数学研究所）；Department of Mathematics, University College London（伦敦大学学院数学系）；Department of Mathematics, ETH（苏黎世联邦理工学院数学系）
Turán type extremal problem is how to maximize the number of edges over all graphs which do not contain fixed forbidden subgraphs. Similarly, spectral Turán type extremal problem is how to maximize (signless Laplacian) spectral radius over all graphs which do not contain fixed subgraphs. In this paper, we first present a stability result for $k\cdot P_3$ in terms of the number of edges and then determine all extremal graphs maximizing the signless Laplacian spectral radius over all graphs which do not contain a fixed linear forest with at most two odd paths or $k\cdot P_3$ as a subgraph, respe…
Motivated by a result of [17], we determine necessary and sufficient conditions on $F\/$ with $|E(F)| \leq n-1\/$ for which $K_n - F\/$ admits a $g$-angulation. For $|E(F)| \geq n\/$, we investigate the possibility of placing $F\/$ in $K_n\/$ such that $K_n -F\/$ admits a $g$-angulation for certain families of graphs $F\/$.
Let Delta>1 be a fixed integer. We show that the random graph G(n,p) with p>>(log n/n)^{1/Delta} is robust with respect to the containment of almost spanning bipartite graphs H with maximum degree Delta and sublinear bandwidth in the following sense: asymptotically almost surely, if an adversary deletes arbitrary edges in G(n,p) such that each vertex loses less than half of its neighbours, then the resulting graph still contains a copy of all such H.
A graph is $1$-planar if it has a drawing in the plane such that each edge is crossed at most once by another edge. Moreover, if this drawing has the additional property that for each crossing of two edges the end vertices of these edges induce a complete subgraph, then the graph is locally maximal $1$-planar. For a $3$-connected locally maximal $1$-planar graph $G$, we show the existence of a spanning $3$-connected planar subgraph and prove that $G$ is hamiltonian if $G$ has at most three $3$-vertex-cuts, and that $G$ is traceable if $G$ has at most four $3$-vertex-cuts. Moreover, infinitely …
We show that if $G$ is a $d$--regular graph on $n$ vertices, then the number of spanning forests $F(G)$ satisfies $F(G)\leq d^n$. The previous best bound due to Kahale and Schulman gave $(d+1/2+O(1/d))^n$. We also have the more precise conjecture that $$F(G)^{1/n}\leq \frac{(d-1)^{d-1}}{(d^2-2d-1)^{d/2-1}}.$$ If this conjecture is true, then the expression on the right hand side is the best possible.
It is known that every graph of sufficiently large chromatic number and bounded clique number contains, as an induced subgraph, a subdivision of any fixed forest, and a subdivision of any fixed cycle. Equivalently, forests and triangles are pervasive, where H is pervasive (in some class of graphs) if for all s>0, every graph in the class with bounded clique number and sufficiently large chromatic number contains an induced subdivision of H, with every edge subdivided at least s times. Which other graphs are pervasive? Chalopin, Esperet, Li and Ossona de Mendez proved that every such graph is a…
For a fixed positive $ε$, we show the existence of a constant $C_ε$ with the following property: Given a $\pm1$-edge-labeling $c:E(K_n)\to \{ -1,1\}$ of the complete graph $K_n$ with $c(E(K_n))=0$, and a spanning forest $F$ of $K_n$ of maximum degree $Δ$, one can determine in polynomial time an isomorphic copy $F'$ of $F$ in $K_n$ with $|c(E(F'))|\leq \left(\frac{3}{4}+ε\right)Δ+C_ε.$ Our approach is based on the method of conditional expectation.
We suggest two related conjectures dealing with the existence of spanning irregular subgraphs of graphs. The first asserts that any $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices contains a spanning subgraph in which the number of vertices of each degree between $0$ and $d$ deviates from $\frac{n}{d+1}$ by at most $2$. The second is that every graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree $δ$ contains a spanning subgraph in which the number of vertices of each degree does not exceed $\frac{n}{δ+1}+2$. Both conjectures remain open, but we prove several asymptotic relaxations for graphs with a large number of ve…
We consider the following random model for edge-colored graphs. A graph $G$ on $n$ vertices is fixed, and a random subgraph $G_p$ is chosen by letting each edge of $G$ remain independently with probability $p$. Then, each edge of $G_p$ is colored uniformly at random from the set $[n-1]$. A result of Frieze and McKay (Random Structures and Algorithms, 1994) implies that when $G = K_n$ and $p = (2 + ε) \frac{\log n}{n}$ for some constant $ε> 0$, then $G_p$ almost surely contains a rainbow spanning tree. In this paper, we show that if $G$ is a $d$-regular $Ω(n)$-edge-connected graph, then when $p…
We prove that every (6k + 2l, 2k)-connected simple graph contains k rigid and l connected edge-disjoint spanning subgraphs. This implies a theorem of Jackson and Jordán [4] and a theorem of Jordán [6] on packing of rigid spanning subgraphs. Both these results are generalizations of the classical result of Lovász and Yemini [9] saying that every 6-connected graph is rigid for which our approach provides a transparent proof. Our result also gives two improved upper bounds on the connectivity of graphs that have interesting properties: (1) every 8-connected graph packs a spanning tree and a 2-con…
Let G be a graph with vertex set {1,...,n}. A spanning forest F of G is increasing if the sequence of labels on any path starting at the minimum vertex of a tree of F form an increasing sequence. Hallam and Sagan showed that the generating function ISF(G,t) for increasing spanning forests of G has all nonpositive integral roots. Furthermore they proved that, up to a change of sign, this polynomial equals the chromatic polynomial of G precisely when 1,...,n is a perfect elimination order for G. We give new, purely combinatorial proofs of these results which permit us to generalize them in sever…
For a set of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, the extremal number $ex(n;\mathcal{F})$ is the maximum number of edges in a graph of order $n$ not containing any subgraph isomorphic to some graph in $\mathcal{F}$. If $\mathcal{F}$ contains a graph on $n$ vertices, then we often call the problem a spanning Turán problem. A linear forest is a graph whose connected components are all paths and isolated vertices. In this paper, we let $\mathcal{L}_n^k$ be the set of all linear forests of order $n$ with at least $n-k+1$ edges. We prove that when $n\geq 3k$ and $k\geq 2$, \[ ex(n;\mathcal{L}_n^k)=\binom{n-k+1}{2…
The domination game is played on a graph G. Vertices are chosen, one at a time, by two players Dominator and Staller. Each chosen vertex must enlarge the set of vertices of G dominated to that point in the game. Both players use an optimal strategy---Dominator plays so as to end the game as quickly as possible while Staller plays in such a way that the game lasts as many steps as possible. The game domination number of G is the number of vertices chosen when Dominator starts the game and the Staller-start game domination number of G when Staller starts the game. In this paper these two games a…
Let $K$ be a complete graph of order $n$. For $d\in (0,1)$, let $c$ be a $\pm 1$-edge labeling of $K$ such that there are $d{n\choose 2}$ edges with label $+1$, and let $G$ be a spanning subgraph of $K$ of maximum degree at most $Δ$. We prove the existence of an isomorphic copy $G'$ of $G$ in $K$ such that the number of edges with label $+1$ in $G'$ is at least $\left(c_{d,Δ}-O\left(\frac{1}{n}\right)\right)m(G)$, where $c_{d,Δ}=d+Ω\left(\frac{1}Δ\right)$ for fixed $d$, that is, this number visibly deviates from its expected value when considering a uniformly random copy of $G$ in $K$. For $d=…
For a finite undirected multigraph G=(V,E) and functions f,g:V-->\NN, let N_f^g(G,j) denote the number of (f,g)-factors of G with exactly j edges. The Heilmann-Lieb Theorem implies that \sum_j N_0^1(G,j) t^j is a polynomial with only real (negative) zeros, and hence that the sequence {N_0^1(G,j)} is strictly logarithmically concave. Separate generalizations of this theorem were obtained by Ruelle and by the author. We unify, simplify, and generalize these results by means of the Grace-Szegö-Walsh Coincidence Theorem.
This paper constructs a planar graph $G_1$ such that for any subgraph $H$ of $G_1$ with maximum degree $Δ(H) \le 3$, $G_1-E(H)$ is not $3$-choosable, and a planar graph $G_2$ such that for any star forest $F$ in $G_2$, $G_2-E(F)$ contains a copy of $K_4$ and hence $G_2-E(F)$ is not $3$-colourable. On the other hand, we prove that every planar graph $G$ contains a forest $F$ such that the Alon-Tarsi number of $G - E(F)$ is at most $3$, and hence $G - E(F)$ is 3-paintable and 3-choosable.
In this paper we present a complete characterization of the smallest sets that block all the simple spanning trees (SSTs) in a complete geometric graph. We also show that if a subgraph is a blocker for all SSTs of diameter at most 4, then it must block all simple spanning subgraphs, and in particular, all SSTs. For convex geometric graphs, we obtain an even stronger result: being a blocker for all SSTs of diameter at most 3 is already sufficient for blocking all simple spanning subgraphs.
We calculate exponential growth constants $ϕ$ and $σ$ describing the asymptotic behavior of spanning forests and connected spanning subgraphs on strip graphs, with arbitrarily great length, of several two-dimensional lattices, including square, triangular, honeycomb, and certain heteropolygonal Archimedean lattices. By studying the limiting values as the strip widths get large, we infer lower and upper bounds on these exponential growth constants for the respective infinite lattices. Since our lower and upper bounds are quite close to each other, we can infer very accurate approximate values f…
We consider sufficient conditions for the existence of $k$-th powers of Hamiltonian cycles in $n$-vertex graphs $G$ with minimum degree $μn$ for arbitrarily small $μ>0$. About 20 years ago Komlós, Sarközy, and Szemerédi resolved the conjectures of Pósa and Seymour and obtained optimal minimum degree conditions for this problem by showing that $μ=\frac{k}{k+1}$ suffices for large $n$. For smaller values of $μ$ the given graph $G$ must satisfy additional assumptions. We show that inducing subgraphs of density $d>0$ on linear subsets of vertices and being inseparable, in the sense that every cut …
