In this paper, two open conjectures are disproved. One conjecture regards independent coverings of sparse partite graphs, whereas the other conjecture regards orthogonal colourings of tree graphs. A relation between independent coverings and orthogonal colourings is established. This relation is applied to find independent coverings of some sparse partite graphs. Additionally, a degree condition providing the existence of an independent covering in the case where the graph has a square number of vertices is found.
Two colourings of a graph are orthogonal if they have the property that when two vertices are coloured with the same colour in one colouring, then those vertices receive distinct colours in the other colouring. In this paper, orthogonal colourings of Cayley graphs are discussed. Firstly, the orthogonal chromatic number of cycle graphs are completely determined. Secondly, the orthogonal chromatic number of certain circulant graphs is explored. Lastly, orthogonal colourings of product graphs and Hamming graphs are studied.
In this paper, perfect k-orthogonal colourings of tensor graphs are studied. First, the problem of determining if a given graph has a perfect 2-orthogonal colouring is reformulated as a tensor subgraph problem. Then, it is shown that if two graphs have a perfect $k$-orthogonal colouring, then so does their tensor graph. This provides an upper bound on the $k$-orthogonal chromatic number for general tensor graphs. Lastly, two other conditions for a tensor graph to have a perfect $k$-orthogonal colouring are given.
We deal with a graph colouring problem that arises in quantum information theory. Alice and Bob are each given a $\pm1$-vector of length $k$, and are to respond with $k$ bits. Their responses must be equal if they are given equal inputs, and distinct if they are given orthogonal inputs; however, they are not allowed to communicate any information about their inputs. They can always succeed using quantum entanglement, but their ability to succeed using only classical physics is equivalent to a graph colouring problem. We resolve the graph colouring problem, thus determining that they can succee…
It was shown by Grohe et al. that nowhere dense classes of graphs admit sparse neighbourhood covers of small degree. We show that a monotone graph class admits sparse neighbourhood covers if and only if it is nowhere dense. The existence of such covers for nowhere dense classes is established through bounds on so-called weak colouring numbers. The core results of this paper are various lower and upper bounds on the weak colouring numbers and other, closely related generalised colouring numbers. We prove tight bounds for these numbers on graphs of bounded tree width. We clarify and tighten the …
In this paper, we study orthogonal colourings of random geometric graphs. Two colourings of a graph are orthogonal if they have the property that when two vertices receive the same colour in one colouring, then those vertices receive distinct colours in the other colouring. A random geometric graph $RG(n,r)$ is a graph constructed by randomly placing $n$ vertices in the unit square and connecting two vertices with an edge if and only if their distance is less than the threshold $r$. We show first that random geometric graphs with $r>n^{-α}$, where $0\leq α\leq\frac{1}{4}$, have an orthogonal c…
A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. We prove a rainbow version of the blow-up lemma of Komlós, Sárközy and Szemerédi that applies to almost optimally bounded colourings. A corollary of this is that there exists a rainbow copy of any bounded-degree spanning subgraph $H$ in a quasirandom host graph $G$, assuming that the edge-colouring of $G$ fulfills a boundedness condition that is asymptotically best possible. This has many applications beyond rainbow colourings, for example to graph decompositions, orthogonal double covers and graph …
Given a $k$-colouring of the edges of the complete graph $K_n$, are there $k-1$ monochromatic components that cover its vertices? This important special case of the well-known Lovász-Ryser conjecture is still open. In this paper we consider a strengthening of this question, where we insist that the covering sets are not merely connected but have bounded diameter. In particular, we prove that for any colouring of $E(K_n)$ with 4 colours, there is a choice of sets $A_1, A_2, A_3$ that cover all vertices, and colours $c_1, c_2, c_3$, such that for each $i = 1,2,3$ the monochromatic subgraph induc…
We investigate the problem of determining how many monochromatic trees are necessary to cover the vertices of an edge-coloured random graph. More precisely, we show that for $p\gg n^{-1/6}{(\ln n)}^{1/6}$, in any $3$-edge-colouring of the random graph $G(n,p)$ we can find three monochromatic trees such that their union covers all vertices. This improves, for three colours, a result of Bucić, Korándi and Sudakov.
We introduce the concept of constant $2$-labelling of a weighted graph and show how it can be used to obtain perfect weighted coverings. Roughly speaking, a constant $2$-labelling of a weighted graph is a $2$-colouring of its vertex set which preserves the sum of the weights of black vertices under some automorphisms. We study this problem on four types of weighted cycles. Our results on cycles allow us to determine $(r,a,b)$-codes in $\mathbb{Z}^2$ whenever $|a-b|>4$, $r\ge2$ and we give the precise values of $a$ and $b$. This is a refinement of Axenovich's theorem proved in 2003.
Difference arrays are used in applications such as software testing, authentication codes and data compression. Pseudo-orthogonal Latin squares are used in experimental designs. A special class of pseudo-orthogonal Latin squares are the mutually nearly orthogonal Latin squares (MNOLS) first discussed in 2002, with general constructions given in 2007. In this paper we develop row complete MNOLS from difference covering arrays. We will use this connection to settle the spectrum question for sets of 3 mutually pseudo-orthogonal Latin squares of even order, for all but the order 146.
Let $G$ be the graph with the points of the unit sphere in $\mathbb{R}^3$ as its vertices, by defining two unit vectors to be adjacent if they are orthogonal as vectors. We present a proof, based on work of Hales and Straus chromatic number of this graph is four. We also prove that the subgraph of G induced by the unit vectors with rational coordinates is 3-colourable.
The zero forcing number and the positive zero forcing number of a graph are two graph parameters that arise from two types of graph colourings. The zero forcing number is an upper bound on the minimum number of induced paths in the graph, while the positive zero forcing number is an upper bound on the minimum number of induced trees in the graph. We show that for a block-cycle graph the zero forcing number equals the path cover number. We also give a purely graph theoretical proof that the positive zero forcing number of any outerplanar graphs equals the tree cover number of the graph. These i…
In 1995, Erdős and Gyárfás proved that in every $2$-colouring of the edges of $K_n$, there is a vertex cover by $2\sqrt{n}$ monochromatic paths of the same colour, which is optimal up to a constant factor. The main goal of this paper is to study the natural multi-colour generalization of this problem: given two positive integers $r,s$, what is the smallest number $\text{pc}_{r,s}(K_n)$ such that in every colouring of the edges of $K_n$ with $r$ colours, there exists a vertex cover of $K_n$ by $\text{pc}_{r,s}(K_n)$ monochromatic paths using altogether at most $s$ different colours? For fixed i…
The focus of this thesis is the study and construction of covering arrays, relying on maximal period sequences and other tools from finite fields. A covering array of strength $t$, denoted $\mathrm{CA}(N; t, k,v)$, is an $N\times k$ array with entries from an alphabet $A$ of size $v$, with the property that in the $N\times t$ subarray defined by any $t$ columns, each of the $v^t$ vectors in $A^t$ appears at least once as a row. Covering arrays generalize orthogonal arrays, which are classic combinatorial objects that have been studied extensively. Constructing covering arrays with a small row-…
We show combinatorially that the higher-order matching polynomials of several families of graphs are d-orthogonal polynomials. The matching polynomial of a graph is a generating function for coverings of a graph by disjoint edges; the higher-order matching polynomial corresponds to coverings by paths. Several families of classical orthogonal polynomials -- the Chebyshev, Hermite, and Laguerre polynomials -- can be interpreted as matching polynomials of paths, cycles, complete graphs, and complete bipartite graphs. The notion of d-orthogonality is a generalization of the usual idea of orthogona…
The main eigenvalues of a graph $G$ are those eigenvalues of the $(0,1)$-adjacency matrix $\mathbf A$ having a corresponding eigenvector not orthogonal to $\mathbf j = (1,\dots,1)$. The CDC of a graph $G$ is the direct product $G\times K_2$. The main eigenspace of $\mathbf A$ is generated by the principal main eigenvectors and is the same as the image of the walk matrix. A hierarchy of properties of pairs of graphs is established in view of their CDC's, walk matrices, main eigenvalues, eigenvectors and eigenspaces. We determine by algorithm that there are 32 pairs of non-isomorphic graphs on a…
In this paper we are interested in lifting a prescribed group of automorphisms of a finite graph via regular covering projections. Here we describe with an example the problems we address and refer to the introductory section for the correct statements of our results. Let $P$ be the Petersen graph, say, and let $\wp:\tilde{P}\to P$ be a regular covering projection. With the current covering machinery, it is straightforward to find $\wp$ with the property that every subgroup of $\Aut(P)$ lifts via $\wp$. However, for constructing peculiar examples and in applications, this is usually not enough…
In this paper we show that many snarks have shortest cycle covers of length $\frac{4}{3}m+c$ for a constant $c$, where $m$ is the number of edges in the graph, in agreement with the conjecture that all snarks have shortest cycle covers of length $\frac{4}{3}m+o(m)$. In particular we prove that graphs with perfect matching index at most 4 have cycle covers of length $\frac{4}{3}m$ and satisfy the $(1,2)$-covering conjecture of Zhang, and that graphs with large circumference have cycle covers of length close to $\frac{4}{3}m$. We also prove some results for graphs with low oddness and discuss th…
A conjecture of Berge suggests that every bridgeless cubic graph can have its edges covered with at most five perfect matchings. Since three perfect matchings suffice only when the graph in question is $3$-edge-colourable, the rest of cubic graphs falls into two classes: those that can be covered with four perfect matchings, and those that need at least five. Cubic graphs that require more than four perfect matchings to cover their edges are particularly interesting as potential counterexamples to several profound and long-standing conjectures including the celebrated cycle double cover conjec…
For many of the unsolved problems concerning cycles and matchings in graphs it is known that it is sufficient to prove them for \emph{snarks}, the class of nontrivial 3-regular graphs which cannot be 3-edge coloured. In the first part of this paper we present a new algorithm for generating all non-isomorphic snarks of a given order. Our implementation of the new algorithm is 14 times faster than previous programs for generating snarks, and 29 times faster for generating weak snarks. Using this program we have generated all non-isomorphic snarks on $n\leq 36$ vertices. Previously lists up to $n…
