In 1967 Kasteleyn introduced a powerful method for enumerating the 1-factors of planar graphs. In fact his method can be extended to graphs which permit an orientation under which every alternating circuit is clockwise odd. Graphs with this property are called {\it Pfaffian}. Little characterised Pfaffian bipartite graphs in terms of forbidden subgraphs in 1975. We extend his characterisation to near bipartite graphs.
A bipartite graph G is known to be Pfaffian if and only if it does not contain an even subdivision H of $K_{3,3}$ such that $G - VH$ contains a 1-factor. However a general characterisation of Pfaffian graphs in terms of forbidden subgraphs is currently not known. In this paper we describe a possible approach to the derivation of such a characterisation. We also extend the characterisation for bipartite graphs to a slightly more general class of graphs.
The permanental polynomial of a graph $G$ is $π(G,x)\triangleq\mathrm{per}(xI-A(G))$. From the result that a bipartite graph $G$ admits an orientation $G^e$ such that every cycle is oddly oriented if and only if it contains no even subdivision of $K_{2,3}$, Yan and Zhang showed that the permanental polynomial of such a bipartite graph $G$ can be expressed as the characteristic polynomial of the skew adjacency matrix $A(G^e)$. In this paper we first prove that this equality holds only if the bipartite graph $G$ contains no even subdivision of $K_{2,3}$. Then we prove that such bipartite graphs …
Given a 0-1 square matrix A, when can some of the 1's be changed to -1's in such a way that the permanent of A equals the determinant of the modified matrix? When does a real square matrix have the property that every real matrix with the same sign pattern (that is, the corresponding entries either have the same sign or are both zero) is nonsingular? When is a hypergraph with n vertices and n hyperedges minimally nonbipartite? When does a bipartite graph have a "Pfaffian orientation"? Given a digraph, does it have no directed circuit of even length? Given a digraph, does it have a subdivision …
A graph $G$ is Pfaffian if it has an orientation such that each central cycle $C$ (i.e. $C$ is even and $G-V(C)$ has a perfect matching) has an odd number of edges directed in either direction of the cycle. The number of perfect matchings of Pfaffian graphs can be computed in polynomial time. In this paper, by applying the characterization of Pfaffian braces due to Robertson, Seymour and Thomas [Ann. Math. 150 (1999) 929-975], and independently McCuaig [Electorn. J. Combin. 11 (2004) #R79], we show that every embedding of a Pfaffian brace on a surface with positive genus has face-width at most…
We give a characterization of Pfaffian graphs in terms of even orientations, extending the characterization of near bipartite non--pfaffian graphs by Fischer and Little \cite{FL}. Our graph theoretical characterization is equivalent to the one proved by Little in \cite{L73} (cf. \cite{LR}) using linear algebra arguments.
Graphical condensation is a technique used to prove combinatorial identities among numbers of perfect matchings of plane graphs. Propp and Kuo first applied this technique to prove identities for bipartite graphs. Yan, Yeh, and Zhang later applied graphical condensation to nonbipartite graphs to prove more complex identities. Here we generalize some of the identities of Yan, Yeh, and Zhang. We also describe the latest generalization of graphical condensation in which the number of perfect matchings of a plane graph is expressed as a Pfaffian or a determinant where the entries are also numbers …
Masbaum and Vaintrob's "Pfaffian matrix tree theorem" implies that counting spanning trees of a 3-uniform hypergraph (abbreviated to 3-graph) can be done in polynomial time for a class of "3-Pfaffian" 3-graphs, comparable to and related to the class of Pfaffian graphs. We prove a complexity result for recognizing a 3-Pfaffian 3-graph and describe two large classes of 3-Pfaffian 3-graphs -- one of these is given by a forbidden subgraph characterization analogous to Little's for bipartite Pfaffian graphs, and the other consists of a class of partial Steiner triple systems for which the property …
We disprove the characterisation of graphs with equal independence and annihilation number by Larson and Pepper (2011). Series of counterexamples with arbitrary number of vertices, arbitrary number of components, arbitrary large independence number and arbitrary large difference between the critical and the regular independence number are provided. Furthermore, we point out the error in the proof of the theorem. However, we show that the theorem still holds for bipartite graphs and connected claw-free graphs.
Graphs derived from groups are a widely studied class of graphs, motivated by their highly symmetric structure. In particular, G-graphs offer an easy and interesting alternative construction of semi-symmetric graphs. After recalling the main properties of these graphs, this papers gives an extended characterisation of G-graphs and develops the link between bipartite G-graphs and incidence graphs. It appears that these two classes of graphs have a wide overlapping despite having completely different constructions. We give partial answers to the problem of finding which complete simple graphs ha…
Phylogenetic networks are a type of directed acyclic graph that represent how a set $X$ of present-day species are descended from a common ancestor by processes of speciation and reticulate evolution. In the absence of reticulate evolution, such networks are simply phylogenetic (evolutionary) trees. Moreover, phylogenetic networks that are not trees can sometimes be represented as phylogenetic trees with additional directed edges placed between their edges. Such networks are called {\em tree based}, and the class of phylogenetic networks that are tree based has recently been characterised. In …
A connected graph G is called matching covered if every edge of G is contained in a perfect matching. Perfect matching width is a width parameter for matching covered graphs based on a branch decomposition. It was introduced by Norine and intended as a tool for the structural study of matching covered graphs, especially in the context of Pfaffian orientations. Norine conjectured that graphs of high perfect matching width would contain a large grid as a matching minor, similar to the result on treewidth by Robertson and Seymour. In this paper we obtain the first results on perfect matching widt…
We show that a graph has an orientation under which every circuit of even length is clockwise odd if and only if the graph contains no subgraph which is, after the contraction of at most one circuit of odd length, an even subdivision of K_{2,3}. In fact we give a more general characterisation of graphs that have an orientation under which every even circuit has a prescribed clockwise parity. This problem was motivated by the study of Pfaffian graphs, which are the graphs that have an orientation under which every alternating circuit is clockwise odd. Their significance is that they are precise…
The $G$-graph $Γ(G,S)$ is a graph from the group $G$ generated by $S\subseteq G$, where the vertices are the right cosets of the cyclic subgroups $\langle s \rangle, s\in S$ with $k$-edges between two distinct cosets if there is an intersection of $k$ elements. In this thesis, after presenting some important properties of $G$-graphs, we show how the $G$-graph depends on the generating set of the group. We give the $G$-graphs of the symmetric group, alternating group and the semi-dihedral group with respect to various generating sets. We give a characterisation of finite $G$-graphs; in the gene…
Barnette's Conjecture claims that all cubic, 3-connected, planar, bipartite graphs are Hamiltonian. We give a translation of this conjecture into the matching-theoretic setting. This allows us to relax the requirement of planarity to give the equivalent conjecture that all cubic, 3-connected, Pfaffian, bipartite graphs are Hamiltonian. A graph, other than the path of length three, is a brace if it is bipartite and any two disjoint edges are part of a perfect matching. Our perspective allows us to observe that Barnette's Conjecture can be reduced to cubic, planar braces. We show a similar reduc…
A grove is a spanning forest of a planar graph in which every component tree contains at least one of a special subset of vertices on the outer face called nodes. For the natural probability measure on groves, we compute various connection probabilities for the nodes in a random grove. In particular, for "tripartite" pairings of the nodes, the probability can be computed as a Pfaffian in the entries of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann matrix (discrete Hilbert transform) of the graph. These formulas generalize the determinant formulas given by Curtis, Ingerman, and Morrow, and by Fomin, for parallel pa…
\noindent By a seminal result of Valiant, computing the permanent of $(0,1)$-matrices is, in general, $\#\mathsf{P}$-hard. In 1913 Pólya asked for which $(0,1)$-matrices $A$ it is possible to change some signs such that the permanent of $A$ equals the determinant of the resulting matrix. In 1975, Little showed these matrices to be exactly the biadjacency matrices of bipartite graphs excluding $K_{3,3}$ as a \{matching minor}. This was turned into a polynomial time algorithm by McCuaig, Robertson, Seymour, and Thomas in 1999. However, the relation between the exclusion of some matching minor in…
A graph $G$ admiting a $2$-factor is \textit{pseudo $2$-factor isomorphic} if the parity of the number of cycles in all its $2$-factors is the same. In [M. Abreu, A.A. Diwan, B. Jackson, D. Labbate and J. Sheehan. Pseudo $2$-factor isomorphic regular bipartite graphs. Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B, 98(2) (2008), 432-444.] some of the authors of this note gave a partial characterisation of pseudo $2$-factor isomorphic bipartite cubic graphs and conjectured that $K_{3,3}$, the Heawood graph and the Pappus graph are the only essentially $4$-edge-connected ones. In [J. Goedgebeur. A co…
For a given $2$-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ of the vertices of a (di)graph $G$, we study properties of the spanning bipartite subdigraph $B_G(V_1,V_2)$ of $G$ induced by those arcs/edges that have one end in each $V_i$. We determine, for all pairs of non-negative integers $k_1,k_2$, the complexity of deciding whether $G$ has a 2-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ such that each vertex in $V_i$ has at least $k_i$ (out-)neighbours in $V_{3-i}$. We prove that it is ${\cal NP}$-complete to decide whether a digraph $D$ has a 2-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ such that each vertex in $V_1$ has an out-neighbour in $V_2$ and each…
For an integer $n\geq 2$, the triangular graph has vertex set the $2$-subsets of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$ and edge set the pairs of $2$-subsets intersecting at one point. Such graphs are known to be halved graphs of bipartite rectagraphs, which are connected triangle-free graphs in which every $2$-path lies in a unique quadrangle. We refine this result and provide a characterisation of connected locally triangular graphs as halved graphs of normal quotients of $n$-cubes. To do so, we study a parameter that generalises the concept of minimum distance for a binary linear code to arbitrary automorphism g…
