Steinerberger defined a notion of boundary for a graph and established a corresponding isoperimetric inquality. Hence, "large" graphs have more boundary vertices. In this paper, we first characterize graphs with three boundary vertices in terms of two infinite families of graphs. We then completely characterize graphs with four boundary vertices in terms of eight families of graphs, five of which are infinite. This parallels earlier work by Hasegawa and Saito as well as Müller, Pór, and Sereni on another notion of boundary defined by Chartrand, Erwin, Johns, and Zhang.
The main contribution of this paper is a new column-by-column method for the decomposition of generating functions of convex polyominoes suitable for enumeration with respect to various statistics including but not limited to interior vertices, boundary vertices of certain degrees, and outer site perimeter. Using this decomposition, among other things, we show that A) the average number of interior vertices over all convex polyominoes of perimeter $2n$ is asymptotic to $\frac{n^2}{12}+\frac{n\sqrt{n}}{3\sqrtπ} -\frac{(21π-16)n}{12π}.$ B) the average number of boundary vertices with degree two …
Define a boundary point of a graph which is embedded in the Euclidean plane a vertex which is incident to only one edge. In this paper we consider graphs which are embedded in the Euclidean plane with a finite number of boundary points. The simple geometric condition we impose on them is that the sum of unit vectors of edges extending from each non-boundary vertex will be equal to zero. We call such a graph a critical graph and ask to maximise the number of vertices of critical graphs with a given size of boundary. The main results of this paper give a sharp upper bound for the maximum number …
We prove a decomposition theorem for the class of triangle-free graphs that do not contain a subdivision of the complete graph on four vertices as an induced subgraph. We prove that every graph of girth at least~5 in this class is 3-colorable.
Let $G=(V,E)$ be a random electronic network with the boundary vertices which is obtained by assigning a resistance of each edge in a random graph in $\mathbb{G}(n,p)$ and the voltages on the boundary vertices. In this paper, we prove that the potential distribution of all vertices of $G$ except for the boundary vertices are very close to a constant with high probability for $p=\frac{c\ln n}{n}$ and $c>1$.
We consider the problem of determining the inducibility (maximum possible asymptotic density of induced copies) of oriented graphs on four vertices. We provide exact values for more than half of the graphs, and very close lower and upper bounds for all the remaining ones. It occurs that, for some graphs, the structure of extremal constructions maximizing density of its induced copies is very sophisticated and complex.
In this paper, we obtain classification results for higher-dimensional analogues of classical association schemes called association schemes on triples (ASTs). We present an algorithm that enumerates all ASTs on a fixed number of vertices whose nontrivial relations are invariant under the action of some group. Applying this algorithm to three, four, and five vertices along with appropriate group actions yields the unique AST over three vertices, the unique symmetric ASTs over four or five vertices, the unique AST over four vertices with two nontrivial relations, and the unique nontrivial circu…
Given a graph $H$ and an integer $k\ge1$, the Gallai-Ramsey number $GR_k(H)$ is defined to be the minimum integer $n$ such that every $k$-edge coloring of $K_n$ contains either a rainbow (all different colored) triangle or a monochromatic copy of $H$. In this paper, we determine the Gallai-Ramsey numbers for connected graphs with five vertices of chromatic number four.
Fong et al. (The game chromatic index of some trees with maximum degree four and adjacent degree-four vertices, J. Comb Optim 36 (2018) 1-12) proved that the game chromatic index of any tree $T$ of maximum degree 4 whose degree-four vertices induce a forest of paths of length $l$ less than 2 is at most 5. In this paper, we show that the bound 5 is also valid for $l\leq 2$. This partially solves the problem of characterization of the trees whose game chromatic index exceeds the maximum degree by at most 1, which was proposed by Cai and Zhu (Game chromatic index of $k$-degenerate graphs, J. Grap…
Let $D_2$ denote the $3$-uniform hypergraph with $4$ vertices and $2$ edges. Answering a question of Alon and Shapira, we prove an induced removal lemma for $D_2$ having polynomial bounds. We also prove an Erdős-Hajnal-type result: every induced $D_2$-free hypergraph on $n$ vertices contains a clique or an independent set of size $n^{c}$ for some absolute constant $c > 0$. In the case of both problems, $D_2$ is the only nontrivial $k$-uniform hypergraph with $k\geq 3$ which admits a polynomial bound.
Menger's Edge Theorem asserts that there exist $k$ pairwise edge-disjoint paths between two vertices in an undirected graph if and only if a deletion of any $k-1$ or less edges does not disconnect these two vertices. Alternatively, there exist $k$ pairwise summand-disjoint formal sums of edges with coefficients in $\mathbb{F}_2$, each one of which is mapped by the boundary map to the sum of vertices $A$ and $B$, if and only if after a deletion of any $k-1$ or less edges there still exist a formal sum of edges with coefficients in $\mathbb{F}_2$ which is mapped by the boundary map to $A+B$. We …
The suspension of the path $P_4$ consists of a $P_4$ and an additional vertex connected to each of the four vertices, and is denoted by $\hat{P_4}$. The largest number of triangles in a $\hat{P_4}$-free $n$-vertex graph is denoted by $ex(n,K_3,\hat{P_4})$. Mubayi and Mukherjee in 2020 showed that $ ex(n,K_3,\hat{P_4})= n^2/8+O(n)$. We show that for sufficiently large $n$, $ex(n,K_3,\hat{P_4})=\lfloor n^2/8\rfloor$.
A subset of vertices of a graph is minimal if, within all subsets of the same size, its vertex boundary is minimal. We give a complete, geometric characterization of minimal sets for the planar integer lattice X. Our characterization elucidates the structure of all minimal sets, and we are able to use it to obtain several applications. We characterize uniquely minimal sets of X: those which are congruent to any other minimal set of the same size. We also classify all efficient sets of X: those that have maximal size amongst all such sets with a fixed vertex boundary. We define and investigate …
A centrally symmetric $2d$-vertex combinatorial triangulation of the product of spheres $§^i\times§^{d-2-i}$ is constructed for all pairs of non-negative integers $i$ and $d$ with $0\leq i \leq d-2$. For the case of $i=d-2-i$, the existence of such a triangulation was conjectured by Sparla. The constructed complex admits a vertex-transitive action by a group of order $4d$. The crux of this construction is a definition of a certain full-dimensional subcomplex, $\B(i,d)$, of the boundary complex of the $d$-dimensional cross-polytope. This complex $\B(i,d)$ is a combinatorial manifold with bounda…
An ordered graph $H$ on $n$ vertices is a graph whose vertices have been labeled bijectively with $\{1,...,n\}$. The ordered Ramsey number $r_<(H)$ is the minimum $n$ such that every two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$ such that the vertices in the copy appear in the same order as in $H$. Although some bounds on the ordered Ramsey numbers of certain infinite families of graphs are known, very little is known about the ordered Ramsey numbers of specific small graphs compared to how much we know about the usual Ramsey numbers for these graph…
In this paper we consider uniformly resolvable decompositions of the complete graph K_v into subgraphs such that each resolution class contains only blocks isomorphic to the same graph. We completely determine the spectrum for the case in which all the resolution classes consist of either P_2, P_3 and P_4.
We prove that a geodesic net with three boundary (= unbalanced) vertices on a non-positively curved plane has at most one balanced vertex. We do not assume any a priori bound for the degrees of unbalanced vertices. The result seems to be new even in the Euclidean case. We demonstrate by examples that the result is not true for metrics of positive curvature on the plane, and that there are no immediate generalizations of this result for geodesic nets with four unbalanced vertices.
We consider the problem of determining the maximum induced density of a graph H in any graph on n vertices. The limit of this density as n tends to infinity is called the inducibility of H. The exact value of this quantity is known only for a handful of small graphs and a specific set of complete multipartite graphs. Answering questions of Brown-Sidorenko and Exoo we determine the inducibility of K_{1,1,2} and the paw graph. The proof is obtained using semi-definite programming techniques based on a modern language of extremal graph theory, which we develop in full detail in an accessible sett…
We define, for any graph $G=(V,E)$, a boundary $\partial G \subseteq V$. The definition coincides with what one would expected for the discretization of (sufficiently nice) Euclidean domains and contains all vertices from the Chartrand-Erwin-Johns-Zhang boundary. Moreover, it satisfies an isoperimetric principle stating that graphs with many vertices have a large boundary unless they contain long paths: we show that for graphs with maximal degree $Δ$ $$ | \partial G| \geq \frac{1}{2Δ} \frac{|V|}{\mbox{diam}(G)}.$$ For graphs discretizing Euclidean domains, one has $\mbox{diam}(G) \sim |V|^{1/d…
A broadcast on a nontrivial connected graph G with vertex set V is a function f from V to {0,1,...,diam(G)} such that f(v) is at most the eccentricity of v for all vertices v. The weight of f is the sum of the function values taken over V. A vertex u hears f from v if f(v) is positive and d(u,v) is at most f(v). A broadcast f is boundary independent if, for any vertex w that hears f from vertices v_{1},...,v_{k}, where k is at least 2, d(w,v_{i}) equals f(v_{i}) for each i. The maximum weight of a boundary independent broadcast on G is denoted by α_{bn}(G). We prove a sharp upper bound on α_{b…
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.
A facial unique-maximum coloring of a plane graph is a proper coloring of the vertices using positive integers such that each face has a unique vertex that receives the maximum color in that face. Fabrici and Göring (2016) proposed a strengthening of the Four Color Theorem conjecturing that all plane graphs have a facial unique-maximum coloring using four colors. This conjecture has been disproven for general plane graphs and it was shown that five colors suffice. In this paper we show that plane graphs, where vertices of degree at least four induce a star forest, are facially unique-maximum 4…
It is well-known that translation schemes on prime number of vertices are exactly the cyclotomic schemes. In this current paper, we show that there are no nonsymmetric primitive translation schemes on prime square vertices with at most four classes. On the other hand, we find new non-symmetric four- and five-class association schemes from cyclotomy as fission schemes of certain symmetric three-class schemes. Moreover, we provide an affirmative answer to the following question raised by Song \cite{song_2}: Are there any other two-class primitive schemes that admit symmetrizable fission schemes …
A broadcast on a nontrivial connected graph G is a function f from V(G) to the set {0,1,...,diam(G)} such that f(v) is at most the eccentricity of v for all vertices v of G. The weight of f is the sum of the function values over V(G). A vertex u hears f from v if f(v) is positive and u is within distance f(v) from v. A broadcast f is boundary independent if any vertex that hears f from two or more vertices is at distance f(v) from each such vertex v. The maximum weight of a boundary independent broadcast on G is denoted by α_{bn}(G). We prove a sharp lower bound on α_{bn}(T) for a tree T. Comb…
We show that there is no 1-ended, planar, hyperbolic graph such that the stabilizer of one of its hyperbolic boundary points acts transitively on the vertices of the graph. This gives a partial answer to a question by Kaimanovich and Woess.
Let $\mathcal{G}$ be the class of all graphs with no induced four-edge path or four-edge antipath. Hayward and Nastos \cite{MS} conjectured that every prime graph in $\mathcal{G}$ not isomorphic to the cycle of length five is either a split graph or contains a certain useful arrangement of simplicial and antisimplicial vertices. In this paper we give a counterexample to their conjecture, and prove a slightly weaker version. Additionally, applying a result of the first author and Seymour \cite{grow} we give a short proof of Fouquet's result \cite{C5} on the structure of the subclass of bull-fre…
The prism over a graph $G$ is the Cartesian product of $G$ with the complete graph on two vertices. A graph $G$ is prism-hamiltonian if the prism over $G$ is hamiltonian. We prove that every polyhedral graph (i.e. 3-connected planar graph) of minimum degree at least four is prism-hamiltonian.
Let $P_t$ denote the path on $t$ vertices. The $r$-coloured Ramsey number of $P_t$, denoted by $R_r(P_t)$, is the minimum integer $n$ such that whenever the complete graph on $n$ vertices is given an $r$-edge-colouring, there exists a monochromatic copy of $P_t$. In this note, we determine $R_r(P_5)$, which is approximately $3r$.
Let T1, T2,..., Tk be spanning trees in a graph G. If for any pair of vertices {u, v} of G, the paths between u and v in every Ti( 0 < i < k+1) do not contain common edges and common vertices, except the vertices u and v, then T1, T2,..., Tk are called completely independent spanning trees in G. The n-dimensional augmented cube, denoted as AQn, a variation of the hypercube possesses several embeddable properties that the hypercube and its variations do not possess. For AQn (n > 5), construction of 4 completely independent spanning trees of which two trees with diameters 2n - 5 and two trees wi…
A tree-coloring of a maximal planar graph is a proper vertex $4$-coloring such that every bichromatic subgraph, induced by this coloring, is a tree. A maximal planar graph $G$ is tree-colorable if $G$ has a tree-coloring. In this article, we prove that a tree-colorable maximal planar graph $G$ with $δ(G)\geq 4$ contains at least four odd-vertices. Moreover, for a tree-colorable maximal planar graph of minimum degree 4 that contains exactly four odd-vertices, we show that the subgraph induced by its four odd-vertices is not a claw and contains no triangles.
In this paper, we address the maximum number of vertices of induced forests in subcubic graphs with girth at least four or five. We provide a unified approach to prove that every 2-connected subcubic graph on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges with girth at least four or five, respectively, has an induced forest on at least $n-\frac{2}{9}m$ or $n-\frac{1}{5}m$ vertices, respectively, except for finitely many exceptional graphs. Our results improve a result of Liu and Zhao and are tight in the sense that the bounds are attained by infinitely many 2-connected graphs. Equivalently, we prove that such gra…
We construct a geodesic net in the plane with four unbalanced (boundary) vertices that has 16 balanced vertices and does not contain proper geodesic subnets. This is the first example of an irreducible geodesic net in the Euclidean plane with 4 boundary vertices that is not a tree.
A broadcast on a nontrivial connected graph G is a function f from the vertices of G to the non-negative integers such that f(v) does not exceed e(v) (the eccentricity of v) for each vertex v. If G is disconnected, we define a broadcast on G as the union of broadcasts on its components. In a search for the best way to generalise the concept of independent sets in graphs to independent broadcasts, there are several ways to look at an independent set X of a graph G. One way is from the point of view of the vertices in X: no two vertices are adjacent -- the usual definition. Another way is from t…
We consider spherical quadrangulations -- spherical embeddings of multigraphs, possibly with loops, so that every face has boundary walk of length 4 -- in which all vertices have degree 3 or 4. Interpreting each degree 4 vertex as a crossing, these embeddings can also be thought of as transversal immersions of cubic graphs which we refer to as the {\it extracted graphs}. We also consider quadrangulations of the disk in which interior vertices have degree 3 or 4 and boundary vertices have degree 2 or 3. First, we classify all such quadrangulations of the disk. Then, we provide four methods for …
We consider the family of graphs whose vertex set is Z^k where two vertices are connected by an edge when their l\infty-distance is 1. We prove the optimal vertex isoperimetric inequality for this family of graphs. That is, given a positive integer n, we find a set A \subset Z^k of size n such that the number of vertices who share an edge with some vertex in A is minimized. These sets of minimal boundary are nested, and the proof uses the technique of compression. We also show a method of calculating the vertex boundary for certain subsets in this family of graphs. This calculation and the iso…
It is shown that for any choice of four different vertices x_1,...,x_4 in a 2-block G of order p>3, there is a hamiltonian cycle in G^2 containing four different edges x_iy_i of E(G) for certain vertices y_i, i=1,2,3,4. This result is best possible.
A connected graph whose automorphism group acts transitively on the edges and vertices, but not on the set of ordered pairs of adjacent vertices of the graph is called half-arc-transitive. It is well known that the valence of a half-arc-transitive graph is even and at least four. Several infinite families of half-arc-transitive graphs of valence four are known, however, in all except four of the known specimens, the vertex-stabiliser in the automorphism group is abelian. The first example of a half-arc-transitive graph of valence four and with a non-abelian vertex-stabiliser was described in […
For a given graph $H$, a graph $G$ is $H$-linked if, for every injection $φ: V(H) \to V(G)$, the graph $G$ contains a subdivision of $H$ with $φ(v)$ corresponding to $v$, for each $v\in V(H)$. Let $f(H)$ be the minimum integer $k$ such that every $k$-connected graph is $H$-linked. Among graphs $H$ with at least four vertices, the exact value $f(H)$ is only know when $H$ is a path with four vertices or a cycle with four vertices. A kite is graph obtained from $K_4$ by deleting two adjacent edges, i.e., a triangle together with a pendant edge. Recently, Liu, Rolek and Yu proved that every $8$-co…
It is well-known that the triangulations of the disc with $n+2$ vertices on its boundary are counted by the $n$th Catalan number $C(n)=\frac{1}{n+1}{2n \choose n}$. This paper deals with the generalisation of this problem to any arbitrary compact surface $S$ with boundaries. We obtain the asymptotic number of simplicial decompositions of the surface $S$ with $n$ vertices on its boundary. More generally, we determine the asymptotic number of dissections of $S$ when the faces are $δ$-gons with $δ$ belonging to a set of admissible degrees $Δ\subseteq \{3,4,5,...\}$. We also give the limit laws of…
The three-in-a-tree algorithm of Chudnovsky and Seymour decides in time $O(n^4)$ whether three given vertices of a graph belong to an induced tree. Here, we study four-in-a-tree for triangle-free graphs. We give a structural answer to the following question: what does a triangle-free graph look like if no induced tree covers four given vertices? Our main result says that any such graph must have the "same structure", in a sense to be defined precisely, as a square or a cube. We provide an $O(nm)$-time algorithm that given a triangle-free graph $G$ together with four vertices outputs either an …
It was noted already in the 90s that many classic graph classes, such as interval, chordal, and bipartite graphs, can be characterized by the existence of an ordering of the vertices avoiding some ordered subgraphs, called patterns. Very recently, all the classes corresponding to patterns on three vertices (including the ones mentioned above) have been listed, and proved to be efficiently recognizable. In contrast, very little is known about patterns on four vertices. One of the few graph classes characterized by a pattern on four vertices is the class of intersection graphs of rectangles that…
A graph G is intrinsically S^1-linked if for every embedding of the vertices of G into S^1, vertices that form the endpoints of two disjoint edges in G form a non-split link in the embedding. We show that a graph is intrinsically S^1-linked if and only if it is not outer-planar. A graph is outer-flat if it can be embedded in the 3-ball such that all of its vertices map to the boundary of the 3-ball, all edges to the interior, and every cycle bounds a disk in the 3-ball that meets the graph only along its boundary. We show that a graph is outer-flat if and only if it is planar.
Tutte's embedding theorem states that every 3-connected graph without a $K_5$ or $K_{3,3}$ minor (i.e. a planar graph) is embedded in the plane if the outer face is in convex position and the interior vertices are convex combinations of their neighbors. We show that this result extends to simply connected tetrahedral meshes in a natural way: for the tetrahedral mesh to be embedded if the outer polyhedron is in convex position and the interior vertices are convex combination of their neighbors it is sufficient (but not necessary) that the graph of the tetrahedral mesh contains no $K_6$ and no $…
A hole is a chordless cycle with at least four vertices. A hole is odd if it has an odd number of vertices. A banner is a graph which consists of a hole on four vertices and a single vertex with precisely one neighbor on the hole. We prove that a (banner, odd hole)-free graph is perfect, or does not contain a stable set on three vertices, or contains a homogeneous set. Using this structure result, we design a polynomial-time algorithm for recognizing (banner, odd hole)-free graphs. We also design polynomial-time algorithms to find, for such a graph, a minimum coloring and largest stable set. A…
We provide an algorithm, running in polynomial time in the number of vertices, computing the unique solution to the biased infinity Laplacian Boundary Problem on finite graphs. The algorithm is based on the general outline and approach taken in the corresponding algorithm for the unbiased case provided by Lazarus et al. The new ingredient is an adjusted (biased) notion of a slope of a function on a path in a graph. The algorithm can be used to determine efficiently numerical approximations to the viscosity solutions of biased infinity Laplacian PDEs.
