In this article we introduce the flow polynomial of a digraph and use it to study nowhere-zero flows from a commutative algebraic perspective. Using Hilbert's Nullstellensatz, we establish a relation between nowhere-zero flows and dual flows. For planar graphs this gives a relation between nowhere-zero flows and flows of their planar duals. It also yields an appealing proof that every bridgeless triangulated graph has a nowhere-zero four-flow.
Laboratoire G-SCOP (CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes)（格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学G-SCOP实验室）；School of Mathematics, Monash University（莫纳什大学数学学院）；Université de Genève（日内瓦大学）；McGill University（麦吉尔大学）；Department of Mathematics, Institute for Operations Research, ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院运筹学研究所数学系）
This paper is devoted to a detailed study of nowhere-zero flows on signed eulerian graphs. We generalise the well-known fact about the existence of nowhere-zero $2$-flows in eulerian graphs by proving that every signed eulerian graph that admits an integer nowhere-zero flow has a nowhere-zero $4$-flow. We also characterise signed eulerian graphs with flow number $2$, $3$, and $4$, as well as those that do not have an integer nowhere-zero flow. Finally, we discuss the existence of nowhere-zero $A$-flows on signed eulerian graphs for an arbitrary abelian group~$A$.
Bouchet conjectured in 1983 that each signed graph that admits a nowhere-zero flow has a nowhere-zero 6-flow. We prove that the conjecture is true for all signed series-parallel graphs. Unlike the unsigned case, the restriction to series-parallel graphs is nontrivial; in fact, the result is tight for infinitely many graphs.
We prove that every regular graph of valency at least four whose automorphism group contains a nilpotent subgroup acting transitively on the vertex set admits a nowhere-zero 3-flow.
We survey known results related to nowhere-zero flows and related topics, such as circuit covers and the structure of circuits of signed graphs. We include an overview of several different definitions of signed graph colouring.
Tutte's 5-Flow Conjecture from 1954 states that every bridgeless graph has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. In 2004, Kochol proved that the conjecture is equivalent to its restriction on cyclically 6-edge connected cubic graphs. We prove that every cyclically 6-edge-connected cubic graph with oddness at most 4 has a nowhere-zero 5-flow.
Tutte's 3-flow conjecture asserts that every 4-edge-connected graph has a nowhere-zero 3-flow. In this note we prove that every regular graph of valency at least four admitting a solvable arc-transitive group of automorphisms admits a nowhere-zero 3-flow.
Let $Γ$ be a graph, $A$ an abelian group, $\mathcal{D}$ a given orientation of $Γ$ and $R$ a unital subring of the endomorphism ring of $A$. It is shown that the set of all maps $φ$ from $E(Γ)$ to $A$ such that $(\mathcal{D},φ)$ is an $A$-flow forms a left $R$-module. Let $Γ$ be a union of two subgraphs $Γ_{1}$ and $Γ_{2}$, and $p^n$ a prime power. It is proved that $Γ$ admits a nowhere-zero $p^n$-flow if $Γ_{1}$ and $Γ_{2}$ have at most $p^n-2$ common edges and both have nowhere-zero $p^n$-flows. More important, it is proved that $Γ$ admits a nowhere-zero $4$-flow if $Γ_{1}$ and $Γ_{2}$ both …
Tutte's $3$-flow conjecture states that every $4$-edge-connected graph admits a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. In this paper, we characterize all graphs with independence number at most $4$ that admit a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. The characterization of $3$-flow verifies Tutte's $3$-flow conjecture for graphs with independence number at most $4$ and with order at least $21$. In addition, we prove that every odd-$5$-edge-connected graph with independence number at most $3$ admits a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. To obtain these results, we introduce a new reduction method to handle odd wheels.
A signed graph is a graph with a positive or negative sign on each edge. Regarding each edge as two half edges, an orientation of a signed graph is an assignment of a direction to each of its half edges such that the two half edges of a positive edge receive the same direction and that of a negative edge receive opposite directions. A signed graph with such an orientation is called a bidirected graph. A nowhere-zero $k$-flow of a bidirected graph is an assignment of an integer from $\{-(k-1), \ldots, -1, 1, \ldots, (k-1)\}$ to each of its half edges such that Kirchhoff's law is respected, that…
Proper vertex colorings of a graph are related to its boundary map, also called its signed vertex-edge incidence matrix. The vertex Laplacian of a graph, a natural extension of the boundary map, leads us to introduce nowhere-harmonic colorings and analogues of the chromatic polynomial and Stanley's theorem relating negative evaluations of the chromatic polynomial to acyclic orientations. Further, we discuss some examples demonstrating that nowhere-harmonic colorings are more complicated from an enumerative perspective than proper colorings.
The study of nowhere-zero flows began with a key observation of Tutte that in planar graphs, nowhere-zero k-flows are dual to k-colourings (in the form of k-tensions). Tutte conjectured that every graph without a cut-edge has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. Seymour proved that every such graph has a nowhere-zero 6-flow. For a graph embedded in an orientable surface of higher genus, flows are not dual to colourings, but to local-tensions. By Seymour's theorem, every graph on an orientable surface without the obvious obstruction has a nowhere-zero 6-local-tension. Bouchet conjectured that the same should…
Tutte's 3-flow conjecture asserts that every $4$-edge-connected graph admits a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. We prove that this conjecture is true for every Cayley graph of valency at least four on any supersolvable group with a noncyclic Sylow $2$-subgroup and every Cayley graph of valency at least four on any group whose derived subgroup is of square-free order.
Let $G$ be a bridgeless cubic graph, and $μ_2(G)$ the minimum number $k$ such that two 1-factors of $G$ intersect in $k$ edges. A cyclically $n$-edge-connected cubic graph $G$ has a nowhere-zero 5-flow if (1) $n \geq 6$ and $μ_2(G) \leq 2$ or (2) if $n \geq 5 μ_2(G)-3$
We introduce and study a multivariate function that counts nowhere-zero flows on a graph G, in which each edge of G has an individual capacity. We prove that the associated counting function is a piecewise-defined polynomial in these capacities, which satisfy a combinatorial reciprocity law that incorporates totally cyclic orientations of G.
There are many major open problems in integer flow theory, such as Tutte's 3-flow conjecture that every 4-edge-connected graph admits a nowhere-zero 3-flow, Jaeger et al.'s conjecture that every 5-edge-connected graph is $Z_3$-connected and Kochol's conjecture that every bridgeless graph with at most three 3-edge-cuts admits a nowhere-zero 3-flow (an equivalent version of 3-flow conjecture). Thomassen proved that every 8-edge-connected graph is $Z_3$-connected and therefore admits a nowhere-zero 3-flow. Furthermore, Lov$\acute{a}$sz, Thomassen, Wu and Zhang improved Thomassen's result to 6-edg…
We prove that, in several settings, a graph has exponentially many nowhere-zero flows. These results may be seen as a counting alternative to the well-known proofs of existence of $Z_3$-, $Z_4$-, and $Z_6$-flows. In the dual setting, proving exponential number of 3-colorings of planar triangle-free graphs is a related open question due to Thomassen. As a part of the proof we obtain a new splitting lemma for 6-edge-connected graphs, that may be of independent interest.
In 1983, Bouchet proposed a conjecture that every flow-admissible signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $6$-flow. Bouchet himself proved that such signed graphs admit nowhere-zero $216$-flows and Zyka further proved that such signed graphs admit nowhere-zero $30$-flows. In this paper we show that every flow-admissible signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 11-flow.
A nowhere-zero $k$-flow on a graph $Γ$ is a mapping from the edges of $Γ$ to the set $\{\pm1, \pm2, ..., \pm(k-1)\} \subset \bbZ$ such that, in any fixed orientation of $Γ$, at each node the sum of the labels over the edges pointing towards the node equals the sum over the edges pointing away from the node. We show that the existence of an \emph{integral flow polynomial} that counts nowhere-zero $k$-flows on a graph, due to Kochol, is a consequence of a general theory of inside-out polytopes. The same holds for flows on signed graphs. We develop these theories, as well as the related counting …
We investigate the \textit{group irregularity strength}, $s_g(G)$, of a graph, i.e. the least integer $k$ such that taking any Abelian group $\mathcal{G}$ of order $k$, there exists a function $f:E(G)\rightarrow \mathcal{G}$ so that the sums of edge labels incident with every vertex are distinct. So far the best upper bound on $s_g(G)$ for a general graph $G$ was exponential in $n-c$, where $n$ is the order of $G$ and $c$ denotes the number of its components. In this note we prove that $s_g(G)$ is linear in $n$, namely not greater than $2n$. In fact, we prove a stronger result, as we additiona…
Bouchet conjectured in 1983 that every flow-admissible signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 6-flow which is equivalent to the restriction to cubic signed graphs. In this paper, we proved that every flow-admissible $3$-edge-colorable cubic signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $10$-flow. This together with the 4-color theorem implies that every flow-admissible bridgeless planar signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $10$-flow. As a byproduct, we also show that every flow-admissible hamiltonian signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $8$-flow.
In this paper we study the flow-property of graphs containing a spanning triangle-tree. Our main results provide a structure characterization of graphs with a spanning triangle-tree admitting a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. All these graphs without nowhere-zero $3$-flows are constructed from $K_4$ by a so-called bull-growing operation. This generalizes a result of Fan et al. in 2008 on triangularly-connected graphs and particularly shows that every $4$-edge-connected graph with a spanning triangle-tree has a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. A well-known classical theorem of Jaeger in 1979 shows that every grap…
Many basic properties in Tutte's flow theory for unsigned graphs do not have their counterparts for signed graphs. However, signed graphs without long barbells in many ways behave like unsigned graphs from the point view of flows. In this paper, we study whether some basic properties in Tutte's flow theory remain valid for this family of signed graphs. Specifically let $(G,σ)$ be a flow-admissible signed graph without long barbells. We show that it admits a nowhere-zero $6$-flow and that it admits a nowhere-zero modulo $k$-flow if and only if it admits a nowhere-zero integer $k$-flow for each …
Two well-known results in the world of nowhere-zero flows are Jaeger's 4-flow theorem asserting that every 4-edge-connected graph has a nowhere-zero $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2$-flow and Seymour's 6-flow theorem asserting that every 2-edge-connected graph has a nowhere-zero $\mathbb{Z}_6$-flow. Dvořák and the last two authors of this paper extended these results by proving the existence of exponentially many nowhere-zero flows under the same assumptions. We revisit this setting and provide extensions and simpler proofs of these results. The concept of a nowhere-zero flow was extended in …
We introduce the ``trivariate Tutte polynomial" of a signed graph as an invariant of signed graphs up to vertex switching that contains among its evaluations the number of proper colorings and the number of nowhere-zero flows. In this, it parallels the Tutte polynomial of a graph, which contains the chromatic polynomial and flow polynomial as specializations. The number of nowhere-zero tensions (for signed graphs they are not simply related to proper colorings as they are for graphs) is given in terms of evaluations of the trivariate Tutte polynomial at two distinct points. Interestingly, the …
Given a graph $G$, the number of nowhere-zero $\ZZ_q$-flows $ϕ_G(q)$ is known to be a polynomial in $q$. We extend the definition of nowhere-zero $\ZZ_q$-flows to simplicial complexes $Δ$ of dimension greater than one, and prove the polynomiality of the corresponding function $ϕ_Δ(q)$ for certain $q$ and certain subclasses of simplicial complexes.
Given a zero-sum function $β: V(G) \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}_3$ with $\sum_{v\in V(G)}β(v)=0$, an orientation $D$ of $G$ with $d^+_D(v)-d^-_D(v)= β(v)$ in $\mathbb{Z}_3$ for every vertex $v\in V(G)$ is called a $β$-orientation. A graph $G$ is $\mathbb{Z}_3$-connected if $G$ admits a $β$- orientation for every zero-sum function $β$. Jaeger et al. conjectured that every $5$-edge-connected graph is $\mathbb{Z}_3$-connected. A graph is $\langle\mathbb{Z}_3\rangle$-extendable at vertex $v$ if any pre-orientation at $v$ can be extended to a $β$-orientation of $G$ for any zero-sum function $β$. We obser…
In 1982 Víctor Neumann-Lara introduced the dichromatic number of a digraph $D$ as the smallest integer $k$ such that the vertices $V$ of $D$ can be colored with $k$ colors and each color class induces an acyclic digraph. Later a flow theory for the dichromatic number transferring Tutte's theory of nowhere-zero flows (NZ-flows) from classic graph colorings has been developed by Hochstättler. The purpose of this paper is to pursue this analogy by introducing a new definition of algebraic Neumann-Lara-flows (NL-flows) and a closed formula for their polynomial. Furthermore we generalize the Equiva…
In 1954, Tutte conjectured that every bridgeless graph has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. Let $ω$ be the minimum number of odd cycles in a 2-factor of a bridgeless cubic graph. Tutte's conjecture is equivalent to its restriction to cubic graphs with $ω\geq 2$. We show that if a cubic graph $G$ has no edge cut with fewer than $ {5/2} ω- 1$ edges that separates two odd cycles of a minimum 2-factor of $G$, then $G$ has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. This implies that if a cubic graph $G$ is cyclically $n$-edge connected and $n \geq {5/2} ω- 1$, then $G$ has a nowhere-zero 5-flow.
We study the flow spectrum ${\cal S}(G)$ and the integer flow spectrum $\overline{\cal S}(G)$ of signed $(2t+1)$-regular graphs. We show that if $r \in {\cal S}(G)$, then $r = 2+\frac{1}{t}$ or $r \geq 2 + \frac{2}{2t-1}$. Furthermore, $2 + \frac{1}{t} \in {\cal S}(G)$ if and only if $G$ has a $t$-factor. If $G$ has a 1-factor, then $3 \in \overline{\cal S}(G)$, and for every $t \geq 2$, there is a signed $(2t+1)$-regular graph $(H,σ)$ with $ 3 \in \overline{\cal S}(H)$ and $H$ does not have a 1-factor. If $G$ $(\not = K_2^3)$ is a cubic graph which has a 1-factor, then $\{3,4\} \subseteq {\ca…
A class of graphs is structurally nowhere dense if it can be constructed from a nowhere dense class by a first-order transduction. Structurally nowhere dense classes vastly generalize nowhere dense classes and constitute important examples of monadically stable classes. We show that the first-order model checking problem is fixed-parameter tractable on every structurally nowhere dense class of graphs. Our result builds on a recently developed game-theoretic characterization of monadically stable graph classes. As a second key ingredient of independent interest, we provide a polynomial-time alg…
Tutte initiated the study of nowhere-zero flows and proved the following fundamental theorem: For every graph $G$ there is a polynomial $f$ so that for every abelian group $Γ$ of order $n$, the number of nowhere-zero $Γ$-flows in $G$ is $f(n)$. For signed graphs (which have bidirected orientations), the situation is more subtle. For a finite group $Γ$, let $ε_2(Γ)$ be the largest integer $d$ so that $Γ$ has a subgroup isomorphic to $\mathbb{Z}_2^d$. We prove that for every signed graph $G$ and $d \ge 0$ there is a polynomial $f_d$ so that $f_d(n)$ is the number of nowhere-zero $Γ$-flows in $G$…
We prove that for every class of graphs $\mathcal{C}$ which is nowhere dense, as defined by Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez, and for every first order formula $ϕ(\bar x,\bar y)$, whenever one draws a graph $G\in \mathcal{C}$ and a subset of its nodes $A$, the number of subsets of $A^{|\bar y|}$ which are of the form $\{\bar v\in A^{|\bar y|}\, \colon\, G\modelsϕ(\bar u,\bar v)\}$ for some valuation $\bar u$ of $\bar x$ in $G$ is bounded by $\mathcal{O}(|A|^{|\bar x|+ε})$, for every $ε>0$. This provides optimal bounds on the VC-density of first-order definable set systems in nowhere dense graph c…
Tutte's famous 5-flow conjecture asserts that every bridgeless graph has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. Seymour proved that every such graph has a nowhere-zero 6-flow. Here we give (two versions of) a new proof of Seymour's Theorem. Both are roughly equal to Seymour's in terms of complexity, but they offer an alternative perspective which we hope will be of value.
For an abelian group $Γ$, a graph $G$ is said to be $Γ$-flow-critical if $G$ does not admit a nowhere-zero $Γ$-flow, but for each edge $e\in E(G)$, the contraction $G/e$ has a nowhere-zero $Γ$-flow. A bound on the density of $Z_3$-flow-critical graphs drawn on a fixed surface is obtained, generalizing the planar case of the bound on the density of 4-critical graphs by Kostochka and Yancey.
Nowhere dense classes of graphs are classes of sparse graphs with rich structural and algorithmic properties, however, they fail to capture even simple classes of dense graphs. Monadically stable classes, originating from model theory, generalize nowhere dense classes and close them under transductions, i.e. transformations defined by colorings and simple first-order interpretations. In this work we aim to extend some combinatorial and algorithmic properties of nowhere dense classes to monadically stable classes of finite graphs. We prove the following results. - In monadically stable classes …
A circular nowhere-zero $r$-flow on a bridgeless graph $G$ is an orientation of the edges and an assignment of real values from $[1, r-1]$ to the edges in such a way that the sum of incoming values equals the sum of outgoing values for every vertex. The circular flow number of $G$ is the infimum over all values $r$ such that $G$ admits a nowhere-zero $r$-flow. We prove that the circular glow number of Goldberg snark $G_{2k+1}$ is $4+1/(k+1)$, proving a conjecture of Goedgebeur, Mattiolo, and Mazzuoccolo.
Tutte's $3$-flow conjecture says that every $4$-edge-connected graph admits a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. Kochol (2001) showed that it is enough to prove this conjecture for $5$-edge-connected graphs. Former, Jaeger, Linial, Payan, and Tarsi (1992) conjectured that every $5$-edge-connected graph is $Z_3$-connected and so it admits a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. In this note, we show that if the second conjecture would be true, then every $3$-tree-connected graph must also be $Z_3$-connected and so Tutte's $3$-flow conjecture can be extended to this family of graphs.
We consider cell colorings of drawings of graphs in the plane. Given a multi-graph $G$ together with a drawing $Γ(G)$ in the plane with only finitely many crossings, we define a cell $k$-coloring of $Γ(G)$ to be a coloring of the maximal connected regions of the drawing, the cells, with $k$ colors such that adjacent cells have different colors. By the $4$-color theorem, every drawing of a bridgeless graph has a cell $4$-coloring. A drawing of a graph is cell $2$-colorable if and only if the underlying graph is Eulerian. We show that every graph without degree 1 vertices admits a cell $3$-color…
In contrast to ordinary graphs, the number of the nowhere-zero group-flows in a signed graph may vary with different groups, even if the groups have the same order. In fact, for a signed graph $G$ and non-negative integer $d$, it was shown that there exists a polynomial $F_d(G,x)$ such that the number of the nowhere-zero $Γ$-flows in $G$ equals $F_d(G,x)$ evaluated at $k$ for every Abelian group $Γ$ of order $k$ with $ε(Γ)=d$, where $ε(Γ)$ is the largest integer $d$ for which $Γ$ has a subgroup isomorphic to $\mathbb{Z}^d_2$. We focus on the combinatorial structure of $Γ$-flows in a signed gra…
