This is the first part of the series of papers containing the complete proofs of the results announced in "Topological obstructions to graph colorings". This is the final version which is to appear in Israel J. Math., it has an updated list of references and new remarks on latest developments
发表信息：
Israel Journal of Mathematics 152 (2006), pp. 285-312
$Hom(G,H)$ is a polyhedral complex defined for any two undirected graphs $G$ and $H$. This construction was introduced by Lovász to give lower bounds for chromatic numbers of graphs. In this paper we initiate the study of the topological properties of this class of complexes. We prove that $Hom(K_m,K_n)$ is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of $(n-m)$-dimensional spheres, and provide an enumeration formula for the number of the spheres. As a corollary we prove that if for some graph $G$, and integers $m\geq 2$ and $k\geq -1$, we have $\varpi_1^k(\thom(K_m,G))\neq 0$, then $χ(G)\geq k+m$; here $Z_2$-action is induced by the swapping of two vertices in $K_m$, and $\varpi_1$ is the first Stiefel-Whitney class corresponding to this action. Furthermore, we prove that a fold in the first argument of $Hom(G,H)$ induces a homotopy equivalence. It then follows that $Hom(F,K_n)$ is homotopy equivalent to a direct product of $(n-2)$-dimensional spheres, while $Hom(\bar{F},K_n)$ is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres, where $F$ is an arbitrary forest and $\bar{F}$ is its complement.
We prove that the topological connectivity of a graph homomorphism complex Hom($G,K_m$) is at least $m-D(G)-2$, where $\displaystyle D(G)=\max_{H\subseteq G}δ(H)$. This is a strong generalization of a theorem of Cukić and Kozlov, in which $D(G)$ is replaced by the maximum degree $Δ(G)$. It also generalizes the graph theoretic bound for chromatic number, $\displaystyleχ(G)\leq D(G)+1$, as $\displaystyleχ(G)=\min\{ m:\text{Hom}(G,K_m)\neq\varnothing\}$. Furthermore, we use this result to examine homological phase transitions in the random polyhedral complexes Hom$(G(n,p),K_m)$ when $p=c/n$ for a…
We apply the homomorphism complex construction to partially ordered sets, introducing a new topological construction based on the set of maximal chains in a graded poset. Our primary objects of study are distributive lattices, with special emphasis on finite products of chains. For the special case of a Boolean algebra, we observe that the corresponding homomorphism complex is isomorphic to the subcomplex of cubical cells in a permutahedron. Thus, this work can be interpreted as a generalization of the study of these complexes. We provide a detailed investigation when our poset is a product of…
In this paper we study implications of folds in both parameters of Lovász' Hom(-,-) complexes. There is an important connection between the topological properties of these complexes and lower bounds for chromatic numbers. We give a very short and conceptual proof of the fact that if G-v is a fold of G, then Bd(Hom(G,H)) collapses onto Bd Hom(G-v,H), whereas Hom(H,G) collapses onto Hom(H,G-v). We also give an easy inductive proof of the only nonelementary fact which we use for our arguments: if $ϕ$ is a closure operator on P, then $Δ(P)$ collapses onto $Δ(ϕ(P))$.
In this paper we study the homotopy type of $\Hom(C_m,C_n)$, where $C_k$ is the cyclic graph with $k$ vertices. We enumerate connected components of $\Hom(C_m,C_n)$ and show that each such component is either homeomorphic to a point or homotopy equivalent to $S^1$. Moreover, we prove that $\Hom(C_m,L_n)$ is either empty or is homotopy equivalent to the union of two points, where $L_n$ is an $n$-string, i.e., a tree with $n$ vertices and no branching points.
We develop a theory of limits for sequences of dense abstract simplicial complexes, where a sequence is considered convergent if its homomorphism densities converge. The limiting objects are represented by stacks of measurable [0,1]-valued functions on unit cubes of increasing dimension, each corresponding to a dimension of the abstract simplicial complex. We show that convergence in homomorphism density implies convergence in a cut-metric, and vice versa, as well as showing that simplicial complexes sampled from the limit objects closely resemble its structure. Applying this framework, we als…
In this paper we introduce the class of ordered homomorphism ideals and prove that these ideals admit minimal cellular resolutions constructed as homomorphism complexes. As a key ingredient of our work, we introduce the class of cointerval simplicial complexes and investigate their combinatorial and topological properties. As a concrete illustration of these structural results, we introduce and study nonnesting monomial ideals, an interesting family of combinatorially defined ideals.
We introduce a model structure on the category of graphs, which is Quillen equivalent to the category of $\mathbb{Z}_2$-spaces. A weak equivalence is a graph homomorphism which induces a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homotopy equivalence between their box complexes. The box complex is a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-space associated to a graph, considered in the context of the graph coloring problem. In the proof, we discuss the universality problem of the Hom complex.
We define a ring R of geometric objects G generated by finite abstract simplicial complexes. To every G belongs Hodge Laplacian H as the square of the Dirac operator determining its cohomology and a unimodular connection matrix L). The sum of the matrix entries of the inverse of L is the Euler characteristic. The spectra of H as well as inductive dimension add under multiplication while the spectra of L multiply. The nullity of the Hodge of H are the Betti numbers which can now be signed. The map assigning to G its Poincare polynomial is a ring homomorphism from R the polynomials. Especially t…
The neighborhood complexes of graphs were introduced by Lovász in his proof of the Kneser conjecture. He showed that a certain topological property of $N(G)$ gives a lower bound for the chromatic number of $G$. In this paper, we study a combinatorial description of the fundamental groups of the neighborhood complexes. For a positive integer $r$, we introduce the $r$-fundamental group $π_1^r(G,v)$ of a based graph $(G,v)$ and the $r$-neighborhood complex $N_r(G)$ of $G$. The $1$-neighborhood complex is the neighborhood complex. We show that the even part $π_1^{2r}(G,v)_{ev}$, which is a subgrou…
We introduce new methods for understanding the topology of $\Hom$ complexes (spaces of homomorphisms between two graphs), mostly in the context of group actions on graphs and posets. We view $\Hom(T,-)$ and $\Hom(-,G)$ as functors from graphs to posets, and introduce a functor $(-)^1$ from posets to graphs obtained by taking atoms as vertices. Our main structural results establish useful interpretations of the equivariant homotopy type of $\Hom$ complexes in terms of spaces of equivariant poset maps and $Γ$-twisted products of spaces. When $P = F(X)$ is the face poset of a simplicial complex $…
We generalize some homotopy calculation techniques such as splittings and matching trees that are introduced for the computations in the case of the independence complexes of graphs to arbitrary simplicial complexes, and exemplify their efficiency on some simplicial complexes, the devoid complexes of graphs, which are simplicial complexes parametrized by graphs. Additionally, we compute the homotopy type of dominance complexes of chordal graphs.
Lattice-based cryptography is not only for thwarting future quantum computers, and is also the basis of Fully Homomorphic Encryption. Motivated from the advantage of graph homomorphisms we combine graph homomorphisms with graph total colorings together for designing new types of graph homomorphisms: totally-colored graph homomorphisms, graphic-lattice homomorphisms from sets to sets, every-zero graphic group homomorphisms from sets to sets. Our graph-homomorphism lattices are made up by graph homomorphisms. These new homomorphisms induce some problems of graph theory, for example, Number Strin…
Box complex is a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-space associated to a graph, and it is known that a certain $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homotopy invariant of it, called the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-index, gives an effective lower bound for the chromatic number. On the other hand, we show that any $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homotopy invariant of the box complex is not equivalent to the chromatic number. Namely, we construct a graph homomorphism $f:X \rightarrow Y$ such that it gives rise to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homotopy equivalence between their box complexes, but $X$ and $Y$ have different chromatic numbers. To see this, we show that some deformat…
We study the behaviour of clique complexes of graphs under the operation of taking graph powers. As an example we compute the clique complexes of powers of cycles, or, in other words, the independence complexes of circular complete graphs.
We consider constrained variants of graph homomorphisms such as embeddings, monomorphisms, full homomorphisms, surjective homomorpshims, and locally constrained homomorphisms. We also introduce a new variation on this theme which derives from relations between graphs and is related to multihomomorphisms. This gives a generalization of surjective homomorphisms and naturally leads to notions of R-retractions, R-cores, and R-cocores of graphs. Both R-cores and R-cocores of graphs are unique up to isomorphism and can be computed in polynomial time. The theory of the graph homomorphism order is wel…
We supply an upper bound on the distinguishing chromatic number of certain infinite graphs satisfying an adjacency property. Distinguishing proper $n$-colourings are generalized to the new notion of distinguishing homomorphisms. We prove that if a graph $G$ satisfies the connected existentially closed property and admits a homomorphism to $H$, then it admits continuum-many distinguishing homomorphisms from $G$ to $H$ join $K_2.$ Applications are given to a family universal $H$-colourable graphs, for $H$ a finite core.
We study how the number $c(X)$ of components of a graph $X$ can be expressed through the number and properties of the components of a quotient graph $X/\sim.$ We partially rely on classic qualifications of graph homomorphisms such as locally constrained homomorphisms and on the concept of equitable partition and orbit partition. We introduce the new definitions of pseudo-covering homomorphism and of component equitable partition, exhibiting interesting inclusions among the various classes of considered homomorphisms. As a consequence, we find a procedure for computing $c(X)$ when the projectio…
For graphs $G$ and $H$, a homomorphism from $G$ to $H$ is a function $φ\colon V(G) \to V(H)$, which maps vertices adjacent in $G$ to adjacent vertices of $H$. A homomorphism is locally injective if no two vertices with a common neighbor are mapped to a single vertex in $H$. Many cases of graph homomorphism and locally injective graph homomorphism are NP-complete, so there is little hope to design polynomial-time algorithms for them. In this paper we present an algorithm for graph homomorphism and locally injective homomorphism working in time $\mathcal{O}^*((b + 2)^{|V(G)|})$, where $b$ is the…
We introduce and study, for a process P delivering edges on the Cartesian product of the vertex sets of a given set of graphs, the P-product of these graphs, thereby generalizing many types of product graph. Analogous to the notion of a multilinear map (from linear algebra), a P-morphism is introduced and utilised to define a P-tensor product of graphs, after which its uniqueness is demonstrated. Congruences of graphs are utilised to show a way to handle projections (being weak homomorphisms) in this context. Finally, the graph of a homomorphism and a P-tensor product of homomorphisms are intr…
In this note, we study the behavior of independent sets of maximum probability measure in tensor graph powers. To do this, we introduce an upper bound using measure preserving homomorphisms. This work extends some previous results about independence ratios of tensor graph powers.
A relational structure is (connected-)homogeneous if every isomorphism between finite (connected) substructures extends to an automorphism of the structure. We investigate notions which generalise (connected-)homogeneity, where "isomorphism" may be replaced by "homomorphism" or "monomorphism" in the definition. Specifically, we study the classes of finite connected-homomorphism-homogeneous graphs, with the aim of producing classifications. The main result is a classification of the finite C-HH graphs, where a graph G is C-HH if every homomorphism from a finite connected induced subgraph of G i…
We provide an upper bound to the number of graph homomorphisms from $G$ to $H$, where $H$ is a fixed graph with certain properties, and $G$ varies over all $N$-vertex, $d$-regular graphs. This result generalizes a recently resolved conjecture of Alon and Kahn on the number of independent sets. We build on the work of Galvin and Tetali, who studied the number of graph homomorphisms from $G$ to $H$ when $H$ is bipartite. We also apply our techniques to graph colorings and stable set polytopes.
We introduce (weak) oddomorphisms of graphs which are homomorphisms with additional constraints based on parity. These maps turn out to have interesting properties (e.g., they preserve planarity), particularly in relation to homomorphism indistinguishability. Graphs $G$ and $H$ are *homomorphism indistinguishable* over a family $\mathcal{F}$ if $\hom(F,G) = \hom(F,H)$ for all $F \in \mathcal{F}$, where $\hom(F,G)$ is the number of homomorphisms from $F$ to $G$. A classical result of Lovász says that isomorphism is equivalent to homomorphism indistinguishability over the class of all graphs. In…
In the branch of mathematics known as graph theory, graphs are considered as a set of points, called vertices, with connections between these points, called edges. The purpose of this paper is to study mappings between two graphs that have certain desirable properties, called graph homomorphisms, and the probability of such a mapping occurring. By using notions from graph theory and combinatorics, in this paper we prove several new theorems that place bounds on this probability for certain common classes of graphs such as Kn, and show that isolated vertices may safely be ignored.
We show that certain canonical realizations of the complexes Hom(G,H) and Hom_+(G,H) of (partial) graph homomorphisms studied by Babson and Kozlov are in fact instances of the polyhedral Cayley trick. For G a complete graph, we then characterize when a canonical projection of these complexes is itself again a complex, and exhibit several well-known objects that arise as cells or subcomplexes of such projected Hom-complexes: the dissections of a convex polygon into k-gons, Postnikov's generalized permutohedra, staircase triangulations, the complex dual to the lower faces of a cyclic polytope, a…
Many problems in extremal graph theory correspond to questions involving homomorphisms into a fixed image graph. Recently, there has been interest in maximizing the number of homomorphisms from graphs with a fixed number of vertices and edges into small image graphs. For the image graph $H_{\text{ind}}$, the graph on two adjacent vertices, one of which is looped, each homomorphism from $G$ to $H_{\text{ind}}$ corresponds to an independent set in $G$. It follows from the Kruskal-Katona theorem that the number of homomorphisms to $H_{\text{ind}}$ is maximized by the lex graph, whose edges form a…
We determine the structure of $\{C_3, C_5\}$-free graphs with $n$ vertices and minimum degree larger than $n/5$: such graphs are homomorphic to the graph obtained from a $(5k - 3)$-cycle by adding all chords of length $1$ mod $5$, for some $k$. This answers a question of Messuti and Schacht. We deduce that the homomorphism threshold of $\{C_3, C_5\}$-free graphs is $1/5$, thus answering a question of Oberkampf and Schacht.
Signed graphs are studied since the middle of the last century. Recently, the notion of homomorphism of signed graphs has been introduced since this notion captures a number of well known conjectures which can be reformulated using the definitions of signed homomorphism. In this paper, we introduce and study the properties of some target graphs for signed homomorphism. Using these properties, we obtain upper bounds on the signed chromatic numbers of graphs with bounded acyclic chromatic number and of signed planar graphs with given girth.
Given a graph G, we investigate the question of determining the parity of the number of homomorphisms from G to some other fixed graph H. We conjecture that this problem exhibits a complexity dichotomy, such that all parity graph homomorphism problems are either polynomial-time solvable or parityP-complete, and provide a conjectured characterisation of the easy cases. We show that the conjecture is true for the restricted case in which the graph H is a tree, and provide some tools that may be useful in further investigation into the parity graph homomorphism problem, and the problem of countin…
Let ${\mathbb{D}}^{m\times n}$ be the set of $m\times n$ matrices over a division ring $\mathbb{D}$. Two matrices $A,B\in {\mathbb{D}}^{m\times n}$ are adjacent if ${\rm rank}(A-B)=1$. By the adjacency, ${\mathbb{D}}^{m\times n}$ is a connected graph. Suppose $\mathbb{D}, \mathbb{D}'$ are division rings and $m,n,m',n'\geq2$ are integers. We determine additive graph homomorphisms from ${\mathbb{D}}^{m\times n}$ to ${\mathbb{D}'}^{m'\times n'}$. When $|\mathbb{D}|\geq 4$, we characterize the graph homomorphism $φ: {\mathbb{D}}^{n\times n}\rightarrow {\mathbb{D}'}^{m'\times n'}$ if $φ(0)=0$ and t…
A geometric graph \G is a simple graph drawn in the plane, on points in general position, with straight-line edges. We call \G a geometric realization of the underlying abstract graph G. A geometric homomorphism from \G to \H is a vertex map that preserves adjacencies and crossings (but not necessarily non-adjacencies or non-crossings). Geometric homomorphisms can be used to define a partial order on the set of isomorphism classes of geometric realizations of an abstract graph G. In this paper, the homomorphism poset of K_{3,3} is determined.
This survey concerns regular graphs that are extremal with respect to the number of independent sets, and more generally, graph homomorphisms. More precisely, in the family of of $d$-regular graphs, which graph $G$ maximizes/minimizes the quantity $i(G)^{1/v(G)}$, the number of independent sets in $G$ normalized exponentially by the size of $G$? What if $i(G)$ is replaced by some other graph parameter? We review existing techniques, highlight some exciting recent developments, and discuss open problems and conjectures for future research.
We consider a variety of connections between threshold graphs, shifted complexes, and simplicial complexes naturally formed from a graph. These graphical complexes include the independent set, neighborhood, and dominance complexes. We present a number of structural results and relations among them including new characterizations of the class of threshold graphs.
We determine under which conditions certain natural models of random constraint satisfaction problems have sharp thresholds of satisfiability. These models include graph and hypergraph homomorphism, the $(d,k,t)$-model, and binary constraint satisfaction problems with domain size 3.
Many problems and conjectures in extremal combinatorics concern polynomial inequalities between homomorphism densities of graphs where we allow edges to have real weights. Using the theory of graph limits, we can equivalently evaluate polynomial expressions in homomorphism densities on kernels $W$, i.e., symmetric, bounded, and measurable functions $W$ from $[0,1]^2 \to \mathbb{R}$. In 2011, Hatami and Norin proved a fundamental result that it is undecidable to determine the validity of polynomial inequalities in homomorphism densities for graphons (i.e., the case where the range of $W$ is $[0…
Given graphs $X$ and $Y$, we define two conic feasibility programs which we show have a solution over the completely positive cone if and only if there exists a homomorphism from $X$ to $Y$. By varying the cone, we obtain similar characterizations of quantum/entanglement-assisted homomorphisms and three previously studied relaxations of these relations. Motivated by this, we investigate the properties of these "conic homomorphisms" for general (suitable) cones. We also consider two generalized versions of the Lovász theta function, and how they interact with these conic homomorphisms. We prove…
A relational structure is homomorphism-homogeneous (HH-homogeneous for short) if every homomorphism between finite induced substructures of the structure can be extended to a homomorphism over the whole domain of the structure. Similarly, a structure is monomorphism-homogeneous (MH-homogeneous for short) if every monomorphism between finite induced substructures of the structure can be extended to a homomorphism over the whole domain of the structure. In this paper we consider L-colored graphs, that is, undirected graphs without loops where sets of colors selected from L are assigned to vertic…
A signed graph is a graph together with an assignment of signs to the edges. A closed walk in a signed graph is said to be positive (negative) if it has an even (odd) number of negative edges, counting repetition. Recognizing the signs of closed walks as one of the key structural properties of a signed graph, we define a homomorphism of a signed graph $(G,σ)$ to a signed graph $(H, π)$ to be a mapping of vertices and edges of $G$ to (respectively) vertices and edges of $H$ which preserves incidence, adjacency and the signs of closed walks. In this work we first give a characterization of the s…
We prove that if $G$ and $H$ are primitive strongly regular graphs with the same parameters and $φ$ is a homomorphism from $G$ to $H$, then $φ$ is either an isomorphism or a coloring (homomorphism to a complete subgraph). Therefore, the only endomorphisms of a primitive strongly regular graph are automorphisms or colorings. This confirms and strengthens a conjecture of Cameron and Kazanidis that all strongly regular graphs are cores or have complete cores. The proof of the result is elementary, mainly relying on linear algebraic techniques. In the second half of the paper we discuss implicatio…
The number of homomorphisms from a finite graph $F$ to the complete graph $K_n$ is the evaluation of the chromatic polynomial of $F$ at $n$. Suitably scaled, this is the Tutte polynomial evaluation $T(F;1-n,0)$ and an invariant of the cycle matroid of $F$. De la Harpe and Jaeger \cite{dlHJ95} asked more generally when is it the case that a graph parameter obtained from counting homomorphisms from $F$ to a fixed graph $G$ depends only on the cycle matroid of $F$. They showed that this is true when $G$ has a generously transitive automorphism group (examples include Cayley graphs on an abelian g…
A homomorphism from a graph $X$ to a graph $Y$ is an adjacency preserving mapping $f:V(X) \rightarrow V(Y)$. We consider a nonlocal game in which Alice and Bob are trying to convince a verifier with certainty that a graph $X$ admits a homomorphism to $Y$. This is a generalization of the well-studied graph coloring game. Via systematic study of quantum homomorphisms we prove new results for graph coloring. Most importantly, we show that the Lovász theta number of the complement lower bounds the quantum chromatic number, which itself is not known to be computable. We also show that some of our n…
A binary Cayley graph is a Cayley graph based on a binary group. In 1982, Payan proved that any non-bipartite binary Cayley graph must contain a generalized Mycielski graph of an odd-cycle, implying that such a graph cannot have chromatic number 3. We strengthen this result first by proving that any non-bipartite binary Cayley graph must contain a projective cube as a subgraph. We further conjecture that any homo- morphism of a non-bipartite binary Cayley graph to a projective cube must be surjective and we prove some special case of this conjecture.
We show that every interval in the homomorphism order of finite undirected graphs is either universal or a gap. Together with density and universality this "fractal" property contributes to the spectacular properties of the homomorphism order. We first show the fractal property by using Sparse Incomparability Lemma and then by more involved elementary argument.
We study homomorphism problems of signed graphs from a computational point of view. A signed graph $(G,Σ)$ is a graph $G$ where each edge is given a sign, positive or negative; $Σ\subseteq E(G)$ denotes the set of negative edges. Thus, $(G, Σ)$ is a $2$-edge-coloured graph with the property that the edge-colours, $\{+, -\}$, form a group under multiplication. Central to the study of signed graphs is the operation of switching at a vertex, that results in changing the sign of each incident edge. We study two types of homomorphisms of a signed graph $(G,Σ)$ to a signed graph $(H,Π)$: ec-homomorp…
