We solve three enumerative problems concerning families of planar maps. More precisely, we establish algebraic equations for the generating function of non-separable triangulations in which all vertices have degree at least d, for a certain value d chosen in {3, 4, 5}. The originality of the problem lies in the fact that degree restrictions are placed both on vertices and faces. Our proofs first follow Tutte's classical approach: we decompose maps by deleting the root and translate the decomposition into an equation satisfied by the generating function of the maps under consideration. Then we proceed to solve the equation obtained using a recent technique that extends the so-called quadratic method.
In this paper our main result states that there exist exactly three combinatorially distinct centrally-symmetric 12-vertex-triangulations of the product of two 2-spheres with a cyclic symmetry. We also compute the automorphism groups of the triangulations. These instances suggest that there is a triangulation of $S^2 \times S^2$ with 11 vertices -- the minimum number of vertices required.
We give a short proof of a result of Jordan and Tanigawa that a 4-connected graph which has a spanning planar triangulation as a proper subgraph is generically globally rigid in R^3. Our proof is based on a new sufficient condition for the so called vertex splitting operation to preserve generic global rigidity in R^d.
A dominating set D of a graph G is a set such that each vertex v of G is either in the set or adjacent to a vertex in the set. Matheson and Tarjan (1996) proved that any n-vertex plane triangulation has a dominating set of size at most n/3, and conjectured a bound of n/4 for n sufficiently large. King and Pelsmajer recently proved this for graphs with maximum degree at most 6. Plummer and Zha (2009) and Honjo, Kawarabayashi, and Nakamoto (2009) extended the n/3 bound to triangulations on surfaces. We prove two related results: (i) There is a constant c such that any n-vertex plane triangulatio…
It is known that the $3$-sphere has at most $2^{O(n^2 \log n)}$ combinatorially distinct triangulations with $n$ vertices. Here we construct at least $2^{Ω(n^2)}$ such triangulations.
We show that no minimal vertex triangulation of a closed, connected, orientable 2-manifold of genus 6 admits a polyhedral embedding in R^3. We also provide examples of minimal vertex triangulations of closed, connected, orientable 2-manifolds of genus 5 that do not admit any polyhedral embeddings. We construct a new infinite family of non-realizable triangulations of surfaces. These results were achieved by transforming the problem of finding suitable oriented matroids into a satisfiability problem. This method can be applied to other geometric realizability problems, e.g. for face lattices of…
A {\em $1-$vertex triangulation} of an oriented compact surface $S$ of genus $g$ is an embedded graph $T\subset S$ with a unique vertex such that all connected components of $S\setminus T$ are triangles (adjacent to exactly 3 edges of $T$). This paper gives formulas enumerating such triangulations (up to equivalence) on an oriented surface of given genus. {\em Une triangulation à un sommet} d'une surface orientée compacte $S$ de genre $g$ est un graphe $T\subset S$ qui a un unique sommet et dont toutes les faces (composantes connexes de $S\setminus T$) sont des triangles (incidentes à trois ar…
We describe an algorithm for the enumeration of (candidates of) vertex-transitive combinatorial $d$-manifolds. With an implementation of our algorithm, we determine, up to combinatorial equivalence, all combinatorial manifolds with a vertex-transitive automorphism group on $n\leq 13$ vertices. With the exception of actions of groups of small order, the enumeration is extended to 14 and 15 vertices.
A $d$-dimensional simplicial complex is balanced if the underlying graph is $(d+1)$-colorable. We present an implementation of cross-flips, a set of local moves introduced by Izmestiev, Klee and Novik which connect any two PL-homeomorphic balanced combinatorial manifolds. As a result we exhibit a vertex minimal balanced triangulation of the real projective plane, of the dunce hat and of the real projective space, as well as several balanced triangulations of surfaces and 3-manifolds on few vertices. In particular we construct small balanced triangulations of the 3-sphere that are non-shellable…
We prove that every triangulation of either of the torus, projective plane and Klein bottle, contains a vertex-spanning planar Laman graph as a subcomplex. Invoking a result of Kir{á}ly, we conclude that every $1$-skeleton of a triangulation of a surface of nonnegative Euler characteristic has a rigid realization in the plane using at most 26 locations for the vertices.
We give three constructions of a vertex-minimal triangulation of $4$-dimensional real projective space $\mathbb{R}P^4$. The first construction describes a $4$-dimensional sphere on $32$ vertices, which is a double cover of a triangulated $\mathbb{R}P^4$ and has a large amount of symmetry. The second and third constructions illustrate approaches to improving the known number of vertices needed to triangulate $n$-dimensional real projective space. All three constructions deliver the same combinatorial manifold, which is also the same as the only known $16$-vertex triangulation of $\mathbb{R}P^4$…
A plane near-triangulation G can be decomposed into a collection of induced subgraphs, described here as the W-components of G, such that G is perfect (respectively, chordal) if and only if each of its W-components is perfect (respectively, chordal). Each W-component is a 2-connected plane near-triangulation, free of edge separators and separating triangles. Graphs satisfying these conditions will be called W-near-triangulations. A linear time decomposition of G into its W-components is achievable using known techniques from the literature. W-near-triangulations have the property that the open…
In 1996, Matheson and Tarjan conjectured that any n-vertex triangulation with n sufficiently large has a dominating set of size at most n/4. We prove this for graphs of maximum degree 6.
For integers $n\ge 0$, an iterated triangulation $Tr(n)$ is defined recursively as follows: $Tr(0)$ is the plane triangulation on three vertices and, for $n\ge 1$, $Tr(n)$ is the plane triangulation obtained from the plane triangulation $Tr(n-1)$ by, for each inner face $F$ of $Tr(n-1)$, adding inside $F$ a new vertex and three edges joining this new vertex to the three vertices incident with $F$. In this paper, we show that there exists a 2-edge-coloring of $Tr(n)$ such that $Tr(n)$ contains no monochromatic copy of the cycle $C_k$ for any $k\ge 5$. As a consequence, the answer to one of two …
We present two versions of a method for generating all triangulations of any punctured surface in each of these two families: (1) triangulations with inner vertices of degree at least 4 and boundary vertices of degree at least 3 and (2) triangulations with all vertices of degree at least 4. The method is based on a series of reversible operations, termed reductions, which lead to a minimal set of triangulations in each family. Throughout the process the triangulations remain within the corresponding family. Moreover, for the family (1) these operations reduce to the well-known edge contraction…
We show that a point set of cardinality $n$ in the plane cannot be the vertex set of more than $59^n O(n^{-6})$ straight-edge triangulations of its convex hull. This improves the previous upper bound of $276.75^n$.
Enumerating all 3-manifold triangulations of a given size is a difficult but increasingly important problem in computational topology. A key difficulty for enumeration algorithms is that most combinatorial triangulations must be discarded because they do not represent topological 3-manifolds. In this paper we show how to preempt bad triangulations by detecting genus in partially-constructed vertex links, allowing us to prune the enumeration tree substantially. The key idea is to manipulate the boundary edges surrounding partial vertex links using expected logarithmic time operations. Practical…
Let $M$ be an $n$-vertex combinatorial triangulation of a $\ZZ_2$-homology $d$-sphere. In this paper we prove that if $n \leq d + 8$ then $M$ must be a combinatorial sphere. Further, if $n = d + 9$ and $M$ is not a combinatorial sphere then $M$ can not admit any proper bistellar move. Existence of a 12-vertex triangulation of the lens space $L(3, 1)$ shows that the first result is sharp in dimension three. In the course of the proof we also show that any $\ZZ_2$-acyclic simplicial complex on $\leq 7$ vertices is necessarily collapsible. This result is best possible since there exist 8-vertex t…
We study three resistance distance-based graph invariants: the Kirchhoff index, and two modifications, namely, the multiplicative degree-Kirchhoff index and the additive degree-Kirchhoff index. In work in press, one of the present authors (2014) and Sun et al. (2014) independently obtained (different) formulas for the Kirchhoff index of subdivisions of graphs. Huang et al. (2014) obtained a formula for the Kirchhoff index of triangulations of graphs. In our paper, first we derive formulae for the additive degree-Kirchhoff index and the multiplicative degree-Kirchhoff index of subdivisions and …
Let $G$ be a graph and $γ(G)$ denote the domination number of $G$, i.e. the cardinality of a smallest set of vertices $S$ such that every vertex of $G$ is either in $S$ or adjacent to a vertex in $S$. Matheson and Tarjan conjectured that a plane triangulation with a sufficiently large number $n$ of vertices has $γ(G)\le n/4$. Their conjecture remains unsettled. In the present paper, we show that: (1) a maximal outerplane graph with $n$ vertices has $γ(G)\le \lceil \frac{n+k} 4\rceil$ where $k$ is the number of pairs of consecutive degree 2 vertices separated by distance at least 3 on the bound…
Let $f_n$ be a function assigning weight to each possible triangle whose vertices are chosen from vertices of a convex polygon $P_n$ of $n$ sides. Suppose ${\mathcal T}_n$ is a random triangulation, sampled uniformly out of all possible triangulations of $P_n$. We study the sum of weights of triangles in ${\mathcal T}_n$ and give a general formula for average and variance of this random variable. In addition, we look at several interesting special cases of $f_n$ in which we obtain explicit forms of generating functions for the sum of the weights. For example, among other things, we give new pr…
There is no 5,7-triangulation of the torus, that is, no triangulation with exactly two exceptional vertices, of degree 5 and 7. Similarly, there is no 3,5-quadrangulation. The vertices of a 2,4-hexangulation of the torus cannot be bicolored. Similar statements hold for 4,8-triangulations and 2,6-quadrangulations. We prove these results, of which the first two are known and the others seem to be new, as corollaries of a theorem on the holonomy group of a euclidean cone metric on the torus with just two cone points. We provide two proofs of this theorem: One argument is metric in nature, the oth…
We give an explicit construction of vertex-transitive tight triangulations of $d$-manifolds for $d\geq 2$. More explicitly, for each $d\geq 2$, we construct two $(d^2+5d+5)$-vertex neighborly triangulated $d$-manifolds whose vertex-links are stacked spheres. The only other non-trivial series of such tight triangulated manifolds currently known is the series of non-simply connected triangulated $d$-manifolds with $2d+3$ vertices constructed by Kühnel. The manifolds we construct are strongly minimal. For $d\geq 3$, they are also tight neighborly as defined by Lutz, Sulanke and Swartz. Like Kühne…
The symmetric group $S_3$ acts on $S^2 \times S^2 \times S^2$ by coordinate permutation, and the quotient space $(S^2 \times S^2 \times S^2)/S_3$ is homeomorphic to the complex projective space $\CC P^3$. In this paper, we construct an 124-vertex simplicial subdivision $(S^2 \times S^2 \times S^2)_{124}$ of the 64-vertex standard cellulation $S^2_4 \times S^2_4 \times S^2_4$ of $S^2 \times S^2 \times S^2$, such that the $S_3$-action on this cellulation naturally extends to an action on $(S^2 \times S^2 \times S^2)_{124}$. Further, the $S_3$-action on $(S^2 \times S^2 \times S^2)_{124}$ is "goo…
A small triangulation of the sphere product can be found in lower dimensions by computer search and is known in few other cases: Klee and Novik constructed a centrally symmetric triangulation of $\mathbb{S}^i\times \mathbb{S}^{d-i-1}$ with $2d+2$ vertices for all $d\geq 3$ and $1\leq i\leq d-2$; they also proposed a balanced triangulation of $\mathbb{S}^1\times \mathbb{S}^{d-2}$ with $3d$ or $3d+2$ vertices. In this paper, we provide another centrally symmetric $(2d+2)$-vertex triangulation of $\mathbb{S}^2\times \mathbb{S}^{d-3}$. We also construct the first balanced triangulation of $\mathbb…
Simultaneous diagonal flips in plane triangulations are investigated. It is proved that every $n$-vertex triangulation with at least six vertices has a simultaneous flip into a 4-connected triangulation, and that it can be computed in O(n) time. It follows that every triangulation has a simultaneous flip into a Hamiltonian triangulation. This result is used to prove that for any two $n$-vertex triangulations, there exists a sequence of $O(\log n)$ simultaneous flips to transform one into the other. The total number of edges flipped in this sequence is O(n). The maximum size of a simultaneous f…
A degree-regular triangulation is one in which each vertex has identical degree. Our main result is that any such triangulation of a (possibly non-compact) surface $S$ is geometric, that is, it is combinatorially equivalent to a geodesic triangulation with respect to a constant curvature metric on $S$, and we list the possibilities. A key ingredient of the proof is to show that any two $d$-regular triangulations of the plane for $d> 6 $ are combinatorially equivalent. The proof of this uniqueness result, which is of independent interest, is based on an inductive argument involving some combina…
We consider the problem of finding an inductive construction, based on vertex splitting, of triangulated spheres with a fixed number of additional edges (braces). We show that for any positive integer $b$ there is such an inductive construction of triangulations with $b$ braces, having finitely many base graphs. In particular we establish a bound for the maximum size of a base graph with $b$ braces that is linear in $b$. In the case that $b=1$ or $2$ we determine the list of base graphs explicitly. Using these results we show that doubly braced triangulations are (generically) minimally rigid …
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…
We study flip graphs of triangulations whose maximum vertex degree is bounded by a constant $k$. In particular, we consider triangulations of sets of $n$ points in convex position in the plane and prove that their flip graph is connected if and only if $k > 6$; the diameter of the flip graph is $O(n^2)$. We also show that, for general point sets, flip graphs of pointed pseudo-triangulations can be disconnected for $k \leq 9$, and flip graphs of triangulations can be disconnected for any $k$. Additionally, we consider a relaxed version of the original problem. We allow the violation of the degr…
We provide a framework to study the interfaces imposed by Dobrushin boundary conditions on the half-plane version of the Ising model on random triangulations with spins on vertices. Using the combinatorial solution by Albenque, Ménard and Schaeffer ([2]) and the generating function methods introduced by Chen and Turunen ([8], [9]), we show the local weak convergence of such triangulations of the disk as the perimeter tends to infinity, and study the interface imposed by the Dobrushin boundary condition. As a consequence of this analysis, we verify the heuristics of physics literature that disc…
Let $G = (V,E)$ be a plane graph. A face $f$ of $G$ is guarded by an edge $vw \in E$ if at least one vertex from $\{v,w\}$ is on the boundary of $f$. For a planar graph class $\mathcal{G}$ we ask for the minimal number of edges needed to guard all faces of any $n$-vertex graph in $\mathcal{G}$. We prove that $\lfloor n/3 \rfloor$ edges are always sufficient for quadrangulations and give a construction where $\lfloor (n-2)/4 \rfloor$ edges are necessary. For $2$-degenerate quadrangulations we improve this to a tight upper bound of $\lfloor n/4 \rfloor$ edges. We further prove that $\lfloor 2n/7…
For integers $d \geq 2$ and $ε= 0$ or 1, let $S^{1, d - 1}(ε)$ denote the sphere product $S^{1} \times S^{d - 1}$ if $ε= 0$ and the twisted $S^{d - 1}$ bundle over $S^{1}$ if $ε= 1$. The main results of this paper are: (a) if $d \equiv ε$ (mod 2) then $S^{1, d - 1}(ε)$ has a unique minimal triangulation using $2d + 3$ vertices, and (b) if $d \equiv 1 - ε$ (mod 2) then $S^{1, d - 1}(ε)$ has minimal triangulations (not unique) using $2d + 4$ vertices. The second result confirms a recent conjecture of Lutz. The first result provides the first known infinite family of closed manifolds (other than …
For $d \geq 2$, Walkup's class ${\cal K}(d)$ consists of the $d$-dimensional simplicial complexes all whose vertex-links are stacked $(d-1)$-spheres. Kalai showed that for $d \geq 4$, all connected members of ${\cal K}(d)$ are obtained from stacked $d$-spheres by finitely many elementary handle additions. According to a result of Walkup, the face vector of any triangulated 4-manifold $X$ with Euler characteristic $χ$ satisfies $f_1 \geq 5f_0 - {15/2} χ$, with equality only for $X \in {\cal K}(4)$. Kühnel observed that this implies $f_0(f_0 - 11) \geq -15χ$, with equality only for 2-neighborly …
The paper is devoted to finding the colorings of the edges of the 1-skeleton of triangulations of the 2-sphere in three colors so that for each face all three of its sides have different colors. First, by the method of adding one vertex inside the triangle or on its side, we enumerate all tiangulations with no more than 8 vertices. Next, one triangulation with 6 and 7 vertices, each with two different colors, was found. And finally, it is shown that other triangulations, which have less than 8 vertices, have one coloring each.
Hakimi, Schmeichel, and Thomassen in 1979 conjectured that every $4$-connected planar triangulation $G$ on $n$ vertices has at least $2(n-2)(n-4)$ Hamiltonian cycles, with equality if and only if $G$ is a double wheel. In this paper, we show that every $4$-connected planar triangulation on $n$ vertices has $Ω(n^2)$ Hamiltonian cycles. Moreover, we show that if $G$ is a $4$-connected planar triangulation on $n$ vertices and the distance between any two vertices of degree $4$ in $G$ is at least $3$, then $G$ has $2^{Ω(n^{1/4})}$ Hamiltonian cycles.
Refining a classical proof of Whitney, we show that any $4$-connected planar triangulation can be decomposed into a Hamiltonian path and two trees. Therefore, every $4$-connected planar graph decomposes into three forests, one having maximum degree at most $2$. We use this result to show that any Hamiltonian planar triangulation can be decomposed into two trees and one spanning tree of maximum degree at most $3$. These decompositions improve the result of Gonçalves [Covering planar graphs with forests, one having bounded maximum degree. J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B, 100(6):729--739, 2010] that ever…
This paper develops an algorithm that identifies and decomposes a median graph of a triangulation of a 2-dimensional (2D) oriented bordered surface and in addition restores all corresponding triangulation whenever they exist. The algorithm is based on the consecutive simplification of the given graph by reducing degrees of its nodes. From the paper \cite{FST1}, it is known that such graphs can not have nodes of degrees above 8. Neighborhood of nodes of degrees 8,7,6,5, and 4 are consecutively simplified. Then, a criterion is provided to identify median graphs with nodes of degrees at most 3. A…
In this paper, we study the feedback game on $3$-chromatic Eulerian triangulations of surfaces. We prove that the winner of the game on every $3$-chromatic Eulerian triangulation of a surface all of whose vertices have degree $0$ modulo $4$ is always fixed. Moreover, we also study the case of $3$-chromatic Eulerian triangulations of surfaces which have at least two vertices whose degrees are $2$ modulo $4$, and in particular, we determine the winner of the game on a concrete class of such graphs, called an octahedral path.
