Conventional Ramsey-theoretic investigations for edge-colourings of complete graphs are framed around avoidance of certain configurations. Motivated by considerations arising in the field of Qualitative Reasoning, we explore edge colourings that in addition to forbidding certain triangle configurations also require others to be present. These conditions have natural combinatorial interest in their own right, but also correspond to qualitative representability of certain nonassociative relation algebras, which we will call chromatic.
We establish Guay-Paquet's unpublished linear relation between certain chromatic symmetric functions by relating his algebra on paths to the $q$-Klyachko algebra. The coefficients in this relations are $q$-hit polynomials, and they come up naturally in our setup as connected remixed Eulerian numbers, in contrast to the computational approach of Colmenarejo-Morales-Panova. As Guay-Paquet's algebra is a down-up algebra, we are able to harness algebraic results in the context of the latter and establish results of a combinatorial flavour. In particular we resolve a conjecture of Colmenarejo-Moral…
Let $\mathfrak g$ be a Borcherds algebra with the associated graph $G$. We prove that the chromatic symmetric function of $G$ can be recovered from the Weyl denominator identity of $\mathfrak g$ and this gives a Lie theoretic proof of Stanley's expression for chromatic symmetric function in terms of power sum symmetric function. Also, this gives an expression for chromatic symmetric function of $G$ in terms of root multiplicities of $\lie g$. The absolute value of the linear coefficient of the chromatic polynomial of $G$ is known as the chromatic discriminant of $G$. As an application of our m…
One of the major outstanding conjectures in the study of chromatic symmetric functions (CSF's) states that trees are uniquely determined by their CSF's. Though verified on graphs of order up to twenty-nine, this result has been proved only for certain subclasses of trees. Using the definition of the CSF that emerges via the Frobenius character map applied to $\mathbb{C}[S_n]$, we offer new algebraic proofs of several results about the CSF's of trees. Additionally, we prove that a "parent function" of the CSF defined in the group ring of $S_n$ can uniquely determine trees, providing further sup…
We investigate chromatic symmetric functions in the relation to the algebra $Γ$ of symmetric functions generated by Schur $Q$-functions. We construct natural bases of $Γ$ in terms of chromatic symmetric functions. We also consider the $p$-positivity of skew Schur $Q$-functions and find a class of $p$-positive ribbon Schur $Q$-functions, making a conjecture that they are \emph{all}. We include many concrete computational results that support our conjecture.
Let G be a combinatorial graph with vertices V and edges E. A proper coloring of G is an assignment of colors to the vertices such that no edge connects two vertices of the same color. These are the colorings considered in the famous Four Color Theorem. It turns out that the number of proper colorings of G using t colors is a polynomial in t, called the chromatic polynomial of G. This polynomial has many wonderful properties. It also has the surprising habit of appearing in contexts which, a priori, have nothing to do with graph coloring. We will survey three such instances involving acyclic o…
We construct Hopf algebras whose elements are representations of combinatorial automorphism groups, by generalising a theorem of Zelevinsky on Hopf algebras of representations of wreath products. As an application we attach symmetric functions to representations of graph automorphism groups, generalising and refining Stanley's chromatic symmetric function.
