We prove that if a family of compact connected sets in the plane has the property that every three members of it are intersected by a line, then there are three lines intersecting all the sets in the family. This answers a question of Eckhoff from 1993, who proved that, under the same condition, there are four lines intersecting all the sets. In fact, we prove a colorful version of this result, under weakened conditions on the sets.
A triple of sets $A,B,C$ in the plane is said to be a {\em tight} if $\textrm{conv}(A\cup B)\cap \textrm{conv}(A\cup C)\cap \textrm{conv}(B\cap C)\neq \emptyset.$ This notion was first introduced by Holmsen, where he showed that if $\mathcal{F}$ is a family of compact convex sets in the plane in which every three sets form a tight triple, then there is a line intersecting at least $\frac{1}{8}|\mathcal{F}|$ members of $\mathcal{F}$. Here we prove that if $\mathcal{F}_1,\dots,\mathcal{F}_6$ are families of compact connected sets in the plane such that every three sets, chosen from three distinct families $\mathcal{F}_i$, form a tight triple, then there exists $1\le j\le 6$ and three lines intersecting every member of $\mathcal{F}_j$. In particular, this improves $\frac{1}{8}$ to $\frac{1}{3}$ in Holmsen's result.
The main results of this paper are generalizations some classical theorems about transversals for families of finite sets to some cases of families of infinite sets.
We construct an intersecting $k$-family of transversal size $\lceil \frac{k+1}{2} \rceil$ and length $k+1$ and study some of its properties. We use this family to prove that $q(4) = 9$. We also construct a $k$-family for $k = 2^m - 1$ of length $2k+1$ and transversal size at least $(2k+1)/3$.
Paul Erdős and László Lovász established by means of an example that there exists a maximal intersecting family of $k-$sets with approximately $(e-1)k!$ blocks. László Lovász conjectured that their example is best known example which has the maximum number of blocks. Later it was disproved. But the quest for such examples remain valid till this date. In this short note, by computing transversal size of a certain series of uniform intersecting families constructed over the cycle graph, we provide an example which has more than $(\frac{k}{2})^{k-1}$ (approximately) blocks.
Aydinian et al. [J. Combinatorial Theory A 118(2)(2011), 702-725] substituted the usual BLYM inequality for L-Sperner families with a set of M inequalities for $(m_1,m_2,...,m_M;L_1,L_2,...,L_M)$ type M-part Sperner families and showed that if all inequalities hold with equality, then the family is homogeneous. Aydinian et al. [Australasian J. Comb. 48(2010), 133-141] observed that all inequalities hold with equality if and only if the transversal of the Sperner family corresponds to a simple mixed orthogonal array with constraint M, strength M-1, using $m_i+1$ symbols in the $i^{\text{th}}$ c…
A bipartite graph is called bipancyclic if it contains cycles of every even length from four up to the number of vertices in the graph. A theorem of Schmeichel and Mitchem states that for $n \geq 4$, every balanced bipartite graph on $2n$ vertices in which each vertex in one color class has degree greater than $\frac{n}{2}$ and each vertex in the other color class has degree at least $\frac{n}{2}$ is bipancyclic. We prove a generalization of this theorem in the setting of graph transversals. Namely, we show that given a family $\mathcal{G}$ of $2n$ bipartite graphs on a common set $X$ of $2n$ …
A graph is $H$-free if it contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H$. We prove new complexity results for the two classical cycle transversal problems Feedback Vertex Set and Odd Cycle Transversal by showing that they can be solved in polynomial time on $(sP_1+P_3)$-free graphs for every integer $s\geq 1$. We show the same result for the variants Connected Feedback Vertex Set and Connected Odd Cycle Transversal. We also prove that the latter two problems are polynomial-time solvable on cographs; this was already known for Feedback Vertex Set and Odd Cycle Transversal. We complement these r…
A (minimal) transversal of a partition is a set which contains exactly one element from each member of the partition and nothing else. A coloring of a graph is a partition of its vertex set into anticliques, that is, sets of pairwise nonadjacent vertices. We study the following problem: Given a transversal $T$ of a proper coloring $\mathfrak{C}$ of some graph $G$, is there a partition $\mathfrak{H}$ of a subset of $V(G)$ into connected sets such that $T$ is a transversal of $\mathfrak{H}$ and such that two sets of $\mathfrak{H}$ are adjacent if their corresponding vertices from $T$ are connect…
We perform a systematic study in the computational complexity of the connected variant of three related transversal problems: Vertex Cover, Feedback Vertex Set, and Odd Cycle Transversal. Just like their original counterparts, these variants are NP-complete for general graphs. A graph $G$ is $H$-free for some graph $H$ if $G$ contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H$. It is known that Connected Vertex Cover is NP-complete even for $H$-free graphs if $H$ contains a claw or a cycle. We show that the two other connected variants also remain NP-complete if $H$ contains a cycle or claw. In the…
Let $\lpt(G)$ be the minimum cardinality of a set of vertices that intersects all longest paths in a graph $G$. Let $ω(G)$ be the size of a maximum clique in $G$, and $\tw(G)$ be the treewidth of $G$. We prove that $ \lpt(G) \leq \max\{1,ω(G)-2\}$ when $G$ is a connected chordal graph; that $\lpt(G) =1$ when $G$ is a connected bipartite permutation graph or a connected full substar graph; and that $\lpt(G) \leq \tw(G)$ for any connected graph $G$.
Let $G=(V, E)$ be a graph. A set $S\subseteq V(G)$ is a {\it dominating set} of $G$ if every vertex in $V\setminus S$ is adjacent to a vertex of $S$. The {\it domination number} of $G$, denoted by $γ(G)$, is the cardinality of a minimum dominating set of $G$. Furthermore, a dominating set $S$ is an {\it independent transversal dominating set} of $G$ if it intersects every maximum independent set of $G$. The {\it independent transversal domination number} of $G$, denoted by $γ_{it}(G)$, is the cardinality of a minimum independent transversal dominating set of $G$. In 2012, Hamid initiated the s…
Let $lct(G)$ be the minimum cardinality of a set of vertices that intersects every longest cycle of a 2-connected graph $G$. We show that $lct(G)\leq k-1$ if $G$ is a partial $k$-tree and that $lct(G)\leq \max \{1, {ω(G){-}3}\}$ if $G$ is chordal, where $ω(G)$ is the cardinality of a maximum clique in $G$. Those results imply that all longest cycles intersect in 2-connected series parallel graphs and in 3-trees.
Transversal structures (also known as regular edge labelings) are combinatorial structures defined over 4-connected plane triangulations with quadrangular outer-face. They have been intensively studied and used for many applications (drawing algorithm, random generation, enumeration ...). In this paper we introduce and study a generalization of these objects for the toroidal case. Contrary to what happens in the plane, the set of toroidal transversal structures of a given toroidal triangulation is partitioned into several distributive lattices. We exhibit a subset of toroidal transversal struc…
Let G be a graph of order n. Let lpt(G) be the minimum cardinality of a set X of vertices of G such that X intersects every longest path of G and define lct(G) analogously for cycles instead of paths. We prove that lpt(G) \leq ceiling(n/4-n^{2/3}/90), if G is connected, lct(G) \leq ceiling(n/3-n^{2/3}/36), if G is 2-connected, and \lpt(G) \leq 3, if G is a connected circular arc graph. Our bound on lct(G) improves an earlier result of Thomassen and our bound for circular arc graphs relates to an earlier statement of Balister \emph{et al.} the argument of which contains a gap. Furthermore, we p…
We consider the size of the smallest set of vertices required to intersect every longest path in a chordal graph. Such sets are known as longest path transversals. We show that if $ω(G)$ is the clique number of a chordal graph $G$, then there is a transversal of order at most $4\lceil\frac{ω(G)}{5}\rceil$. We also consider the analogous question for longest cycles, and show that if $G$ is a 2-connected chordal graph then there is a transversal intersecting all longest cycles of order at most $2\lceil\frac{ω(G)}{3}\rceil$.
In finite group theory, studying the prime graph of a group has been an important topic for almost the past half-century. Recently, prime graphs of solvable groups have been characterized in graph theoretical terms only. This now allows the study of these graphs without any knowledge of the group theoretical background. In this paper we study prime graphs from a linear algebra angle and focus on the class of minimally connected prime graphs introduced in earlier work on the subject. As our main results, we determine the determinants of the adjacency matrices and the spectra of some important f…
For a graph property $\mathcal{P}$ and a common vertex set $V = \{1, 2, \ldots, n\}$, a family of graphs on $V$ is \emph{$\mathcal{P}$-intersecting} iff $G \cap H$ satisfies $\mathcal{P}$ for all $G,H$ in the family. Addressing a question of Chung, Graham, Frankl, and Shearer, we explore---for various $\mathcal{P}$---the maximum cardinality among all $\mathcal{P}$-intersecting families of graphs. In the connected-intersecting case, we resolve the question completely by a short linear algebraic proof showing this maximum is attained by taking all graphs containing a fixed spanning tree (though …
A linear system is a pair $(P,\mathcal{L})$ where $\mathcal{L}$ is a family of subsets on a ground finite set $P$, such that $|l\cap l^\prime|\leq 1$, for every $l,l^\prime \in \mathcal{L}$. The elements of $P$ and $\mathcal{L}$ are called points and lines, respectively, and the linear system is called intersecting if any pair of lines intersect in exactly one point. A subset $T$ of points of $P$ is a transversal of $(P,\mathcal{L})$ if $T$ intersects any line, and the transversal number, $τ(P,\mathcal{L})$, is the minimum order of a transversal. On the other hand, a 2-packing set of a linear …
In this paper, we count acyclic and strongly connected uniform directed labeled hypergraphs. For these combinatorial structures, we introduce a specific generating function allowing us to recover and generalize some results on the number of directed acyclic graphs and the number of strongly connected directed graphs.
The dicycle transversal number t(D) of a digraph D is the minimum size of a dicycle transversal of D, i. e. a set T of vertices of D such that D-T is acyclic. We study the following problem: Given a digraph D, decide if there is a dicycle B in D and a cycle C in the underlying undirected graph of D such such that B,C are disjoint. It is known that there is a polynomial time algorithm for this problem when restricted to strongly connected graphs, which actually finds B,C if they exist. We generalize this to any class of digraphs D with either t(D) not equal to 1 or t(D)=1 and a bounded number o…
Many interesting graph families contain only 2-connected graphs, which have ear decompositions. We develop a technique to generate families of unlabeled 2-connected graphs using ear augmentations and apply this technique to two problems. In the first application, we search for uniquely K_r-saturated graphs and find the list of uniquely K_4-saturated graphs on at most 12 vertices, supporting current conjectures for this problem. In the second application, we verifying the Edge Reconstruction Conjecture for all 2-connected graphs on at most 12 vertices. This technique can be easily extended to m…
Let $H$ be a graph with maximum degree $d$, and let $d'\ge 0$. We show that for some $c>0$ depending on $H,d'$, and all integers $n\ge 0$, there are at most $c^n$ unlabelled simple $d$-connected $n$-vertex graphs with maximum degree at most $d'$ that do not contain $H$ as a subdivision. On the other hand, the number of unlabelled simple $(d-1)$-connected $n$-vertex graphs with minimum degree $d$ and maximum degree at most $d+1$ that do not contain $K_{d+1}$ as a subdivision is superexponential in $n$.
We give an upper bound for the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex 2-connected $r$-uniform hypergraph with no Berge cycle of length $k$ or greater, where $n\geq k \geq 4r\geq 12$. For $n$ large with respect to $r$ and $k$, this bound is sharp and is significantly stronger than the bound without restrictions on connectivity. It turned out that it is simpler to prove the bound for the broader class of Sperner families where the size of each set is at most $r$. For such families, our bound is sharp for all $n\geq k\geq r\geq 3$.
Closed meanders are planar configurations of one or several disjoint closed Jordan curves intersecting a given line or curve transversely. They arise as shooting curves of parabolic PDEs in one space dimension, as trajectories of Cartesian billiards, and as representations of elements of Temperley-Lieb algebras. Given the configuration of intersections, for example as a permutation or an arc collection, the number of Jordan curves is unknown and needs to be determined. We address this question in the special case of bi-rainbow meanders, which are given as non-branched families (rainbows) of ne…
We prove that every connected strongly regular graph on sufficiently many vertices is Hamiltonian. We prove this by showing that, apart from three families, connected strongly regular graphs are (highly) pseudo-random. Our results suggest a number of new questions and conjectures.
In this paper, some subclasses of block graphs are considered in order to analyze Fiedler vector of its members. Two families of block graphs with cliques of fixed size, the block-path and block-starlike graphs, are introduced. Cases A and B of classification for both families were considered, as well as the behavior of the algebraic connectivity for particular cases of block-path graphs.
The Helly number of a family of sets with empty intersection is the size of its largest inclusion-wise minimal sub-family with empty intersection. Let F be a finite family of open subsets of an arbitrary locally arc-wise connected topological space Gamma. Assume that for every sub-family G of F the intersection of the elements of G has at most r connected components, each of which is a Q-homology cell. We show that the Helly number of F is at most r(d_Gamma+1), where d_Gamma is the smallest integer j such that every open set of Gamma has trivial Q-homology in dimension j and higher. (In partic…
