The combinatorial structure of a d-dimensional simple convex polytope can be reconstructed from its abstract graph [Blind & Mani 1987, Kalai 1988]. However, no polynomial/efficient algorithm is known for this task, although a polynomially checkable certificate for the correct reconstruction was found by [Joswig, Kaibel & Koerner 2000]. A much stronger certificate would be given by the following characterization of the facet subgraphs, conjectured by M. Perles:
``The facet subgraphs of the graph of a simple d-polytope are exactly all the (d-1)-regular, connected, induced, non-separating subgraphs'' [Perles 1970].
We give examples for the validity of Perles conjecture: In particular, it holds for the duals of cyclic polytopes, and for the duals of stacked polytopes. On the other hand, we identify a topological obstruction that must be present in any counterexample to Perles' conjecture; thus, starting with a modification of ``Bing's house'', we construct explicit 4-dimensional counterexamples.
In this paper, we present a minimal counterexample to a conjecture of Perles that answers a question of Haase and Ziegler. The example is a simple 4-polytope that has an induced 3-connected 3-regular subgraph, whose graph complement is connected. This subgraph is planar and not the graph of a facet of the polytope.
We study lattice-theoretical extensions of the celebrated Sauer-Shelah-Perles Lemma. We conjecture that a general Sauer-Shelah-Perlem Lemma holds for a lattice $L$ if and only if $L$ is relatively complemented, and prove partial results towards this conjecture.
In a Note added in proof to a 1984 paper, Daniel A. Marcus claimed to have a counterexample to his conjecture that a minimal positively k-spanning vector configuration in R^m has size at most 2km. However, the counterexample was never published, and seems to be lost. Independently, ten years earlier, Peter Mani in 1974 solved a problem by Hadwiger, disproving that every ``illuminated'' d-dimensional polytope must have at least 2d vertices. These two studies are related by Gale duality, an elementary linear algebra technique devised by Micha A. Perles in the sixties. Thus, we note that Mani's s…
In 1982, Zaks, Perles and Wills discovered a d-dimensional lattice simplex S_{d,k} with k interior lattice points, whose volume is linear in k and doubly exponential in the dimension d. It is conjectured that, for all d \ge 3 and k \ge 1, the simplex S_{d,k} is a volume maximizer in the family P^d(k) of all d-dimensional lattice polytopes with k interior lattice points. To obtain a partial confirmation of this conjecture, one can try to verify it for a subfamily of P^d(k) that naturally contains S_{d,k} as one of the members. Currently, one does not even know whether S_{d,k} is optimal within …
An outstanding conjecture on roots of Ehrhart polynomials says that all roots $α$ of the Ehrhart polynomial of an integral convex polytope of dimension $d$ satisfy $-d \leq \Re(α) \leq d-1$. In this paper, we suggest some counterexamples of this conjecture.
The Neggers-Stanley conjecture (also known as the Poset conjecture) asserts that the polynomial counting the linear extensions of a partially ordered set on $\{1,2,...,p\}$ by their number of descents has real zeros only. We provide counterexamples to this conjecture.
We present counterexamples to a 30-year-old conjecture of Las Vergnas [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 1988] regarding the Tutte polynomial of binary matroids.
We show that no tree on twenty vertices with maximum degree ten has Schur positive chromatic symmetric function, thereby providing a counterexample to a conjecture from the paper "Schur and e-positivity of trees and cut vertices".
Gross, Mansour and Tucker introduced the partial-dual orientable genus polynomial and the partial-dual Euler genus polynomial. They showed that the partial-dual genus polynomial for an orientable ribbon graph is interpolating and gave an analogous conjecture: The partial-dual Euler-genus polynomial for any non-orientable ribbon graph is interpolating. In this paper, we first give some counterexamples to the conjecture. Then motivated by these counterexamples, we further find two infinite classes of counterexamples.
In 2008 Karasev conjectured that for every set of $r$ blue lines, $r$ green lines, and $r$ red lines in the plane, there exists a partition of them into $r$ colorful triples whose induced triangles intersect. We disprove this conjecture for every $r$ and extend the counterexamples to higher dimensions.
Consider a graph obtained by taking edge disjoint union of $k$ complete bipartite graphs. Alon, Saks and Seymour conjectured that such graph has chromatic number at most $k+1$. This well known conjecture remained open for almost twenty years. In this paper, we construct a counterexample to this conjecture and discuss several related problems in combinatorial geometry and communication complexity.
Graph pebbling considers the problem of transforming configurations of discrete pebbles to certain target configurations on the vertices of a graph, using the so-called pebbling move. This paper provides counterexamples to a monotonicity conjecture stated by Hurlbert et al. concerning the pebbling number compared to the pebbling threshold.
In 1980, Balasubramanian and Parthasarathy introduced the bivariate permanent polynomials of graphs and conjectured that this graph polynomial is a graph characterising polynomial, that is, any two graphs with the same bivariate permanent polynomial are isomorphic. In this note, we give counter examples to this conjecture.
Associated with every graph $G$ of chromatic number $χ$ is another graph $G'$. The vertex set of $G'$ consists of all $χ$-colorings of $G$, and two $χ$-colorings are adjacent when they differ on exactly one vertex. According to a conjecture of Björner and Lovász, this graph $G'$ must be disconnected. In this note we give a counterexample to this conjecture.
The main purpose of this note is to give a counterexample to the following conjecture, raised by Florian Frick [\textit{Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN 2020 (13), 4037-4061 (2020)}]. Conjecture. Let $r\geq 3$ and let $\mathcal{F}$ be a set system. Then $$χ\left(\textrm{KG}^r\left(\mathcal{F}_{r-stab}\right)\right)\geq\left\lceil\frac{cd_r\left(\mathcal{F}\right)}{r-1}\right\rceil.$$
We construct an infinite family of counterexamples to Thomassen's conjecture that the vertices of every 3-connected, cubic graph on at least 8 vertices can be colored blue and red such that the blue subgraph has maximum degree at most 1 and the red subgraph minimum degree at least 1 and contains no path on 4 vertices.
Problem 4.19 in Ziegler's "Lectures on Polytopes" asserts that every simple $3$-dimensional polytope has the property that its dual can be constructed as the convex hull of a subset of the vertices of the original simple polytope. In this note we state a higher-dimensional analogue of this conjecture and provide a family of counterexamples for dimension $d \geq 3$.
The Brauldi-Hoffman conjecture, proved by Rowlinson in 1988, characterized the graph with maximal spectral radius among all simple graphs with prescribed number of edges. In 2008, Bhattacharya, Friedland, and Peled proposed an analog, which will be called the BFP conjecture in the following, of the Brauldi-Hoffman conjecture for the bipartite graphs with fixed numbers of edges in the graph and vertices in the bipartition. The BFP conjecture was proved to be correct if the number of edges is large enough by several authors. However, in this paper we provide some counterexamples of the BFP conje…
In 1975 Stein conjectured that in every $n\times n$ array filled with the numbers $1, \dots, n$ with every number occuring exactly $n$ times, there is a partial transversal of size $n-1$. In this note we show that this conjecture is false by constructing such arrays without partial transverals of size $n-\frac{1}{42}\ln n$.
Merker conjectured that if $k \ge 2$ is an integer and $G$ a 3-connected cubic planar graph of circumference at least $k$, then the set of cycle lengths of $G$ must contain at least one element of the interval $[k, 2k+2]$. We here prove that for every even integer $k \ge 6$ there is an infinite family of counterexamples.
Hedetniemi's conjecture~\cite{hedetniemi1966homomorphisms} for $c$-colorings states that the tensor product $G \times H$ is $c$-colorable if and only if $G$ or $H$ is $c$-colorable. El-Zahar and Sauer~\cite{El-ZaharS85} proved it for $c = 3$. In a recent breakthrough, Shitov~\cite{Shitov19} showed counterexamples, for large $c$. While Shitov's proof is already remarkably short, Zhu \cite{Zhu20} simplified the argument and gave a more explicit counterexample for $c=125$. Tardif \cite{Tardif20} showed that a modification of the arguments allows to use ``wide colorings'' to obtain counterexamples…
Gross, Mansour and Tucker introduced the partial-dual orientable genus polynomial and the partial-dual Euler genus polynomial. They computed these two partial-dual genus polynomials of four families of ribbon graphs, posed some research problems and made some conjectures. In this paper, we introduce the notion of signed sequences of bouquets and obtain the partial-dual Euler genus polynomials for all ribbon graphs with the number of edges less than 4 and the partial-dual orientable genus polynomials for all orientable ribbon graphs with the number of edges less than 5 in terms of signed sequen…
For a graph $G$, its energy $\mathcal{E}(G)$ is the sum of absolute values of the eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix, the matching number $μ(G)$ is the number of edges in a maximum matching of $G$, while $Δ$ is the maximum vertex degree of $G$. Akbari, Alazemi and Anđelić in [Appl. Anal. Discrete Math. 15 (2021), 444--459] proved that $\mathcal{E}(G) \leq 2μ(G)$ when $G$ is connected and $Δ\geq6$, and conjectured that the same inequality is also valid when $2\leqΔ\leq5$. Here we first computationally enumerate small counterexamples for this conjecture and then provide two infinite families of…
Bollobás and Riordan, in their paper "Metrics for sparse graphs," proposed a number of provocative conjectures extending central results of quasirandom graphs and graph limits to sparse graphs. We refute these conjectures by exhibiting a sequence of graphs with convergent normalized subgraph densities (and pseudorandom $C_4$-counts), but with no limit expressible as a kernel.
A facial unique-maximum coloring of a plane graph is a proper vertex coloring by natural numbers where on each face $α$ the maximal color appears exactly once on the vertices of $α$. Fabrici and Göring proved that six colors are enough for any plane graph and conjectured that four colors suffice. This conjecture is a strengthening of the Four Color theorem. Wendland later decreased the upper bound from six to five. In this note, we disprove the conjecture by giving an infinite family of counterexamples. Thus we conclude that facial unique-maximum chromatic number of the sphere is five.
We present an example of a symmetric tensor of size $800\times 800\times 800$ which can be written a sum of $903$ simple tensors with complex entries but not as a sum of $903$ symmetric simple tensors.
Karp conjectured that all nontrivial monotone graph properties are evasive. This was proved for n a prime power, and n=6, where n is the number of graph vertices, by Kahn, Saks, and Sturtevant. We give a complete description of which transitive graphs are contained in a possible counterexample when n=10.
The permanent-on-top conjecture states that the largest eigenvalue of the Schur power matrix of a positive semi-definite Hermitian matrix H is per(H). A counterexample has been found with the help of computers, but here, I present another counterexample that can be checked by hand. My method is to use linear representations of groups to connect the spectrum of the Schur power matrix with the spectra of the entrywise(Hadamard) product matrices of permanental compound matrices. By that, we are able to study the properties of the spectrum of the Schur power matrix through the entrywise(Hadamard) …
As a discrete analog to Minkowski's theorem on convex bodies, Wills conjectured that the Ehrhart coefficients of a centrally symmetric lattice polytope with exactly one interior lattice point are maximized by those of the cube of side length two. We discuss several counterexamples to this conjecture and, on the positive side, we identify a family of lattice polytopes that fulfill the claimed inequalities. This family is related to the recently introduced class of $l$-reflexive polytopes.
The periodic tiling conjecture asserts that any finite subset of a lattice $\mathbb{Z^d}$ which tiles that lattice by translations, in fact tiles periodically. We announce here a disproof of this conjecture for sufficiently large $d$, which also implies a disproof of the corresponding conjecture for Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{R^d}$. In fact, we also obtain a counterexample in a group of the form $\mathbb{Z^2} \times G_0$ for some finite abelian $G_0$. Our methods rely on encoding a certain class of "$p$-adically structured functions" in terms of certain functional equations.
Let $f(d)$ be the smallest number so that every set in $R^d$ of diameter 1 can be partitioned into $f(d)$ sets of diameter smaller than 1. Borsuk's conjecture was that $f(d)\! =\!d\!+\!1$. We prove that $f(d)\! \ge\! (1.2)^{\sqrt d}$ for large~$d$.
For permutations x and w, let mu(x,w) be the coefficient of highest possible degree in the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomial P_{x,w}. It is well-known that the coefficients mu(x,w) arise as the edge labels of certain graphs encoding the representations of S_n. The 0-1 Conjecture states that the mu(x,w) are either 0 or 1. We present two counterexamples to this conjecture, the first in S_16, for which x and w are in the same left cell, and the second in S_10. The proof of the counterexample in S_16 relies on computer calculations.
We develop an algorithm for efficiently computing recursively defined functions on posets. We illustrate this algorithm by disproving conjectures about the game Subset Takeaway (Chomp on a hypercube) and computing the number of linear extensions of the lattice of a 7-cube and related lattices.
