The vertex-nullity interlace polynomial of a graph, described by Arratia, Bollobás and Sorkin as evolving from questions of DNA sequencing, and extended to a two-variable interlace polynomial by the same authors, evokes many open questions. These include relations between the interlace polynomial and the Tutte polynomial and the computational complexity of the vertex-nullity interlace polynomial. Here, we prove that the one-variable vertex-nullity interlace polynomial is in general #P-hard to compute. We also show a relation between the two-variable interlace polynomial and the topological Tutte polynomial of Bollobás and Riordan. We define the γinvariant as the coefficient of x^1 in the vertex-nullity interlace polynomial, analogously to the βinvariant, which is the coefficient of x^1 in the Tutte polynomial. We then turn to distance hereditary graphs, and show that graphs in this class have γinvariant of 2^{n+1} when n true twins are added in their construction. We furthermore show that bipartite distance hereditary graphs are exactly the class of graphs with γinvariant 2, just as the series-parallel graphs are exactly the class of graphs with βinvariant 1. In addition, we show that a bipartite distance hereditary graph arises precisely as the circle graph of any Euler circuit in the oriented medial graph of a series-parallel graph. From this we conclude that the vertex-nullity interlace polynomial is polynomial time to compute for bipartite distance hereditry graphs, just as the Tutte polynomial is polynomial time to compute for series-parallel graphs.
In this work, we study the interlace polynomial as a generalization of a graph invariant to delta-matroids. We prove that the interlace polynomial satisfies the four-term relation for delta-matroids and determines thus a finite type invariant of links in the 3-sphere.
In this paper, we survey results regarding the interlace polynomial of a graph, connections to such graph polynomials as the Martin and Tutte polynomials, and generalizations to the realms of isotropic systems and delta-matroids.
Let G be a graph with adjacency matrix A(G). Consider the matrix IA(G)=(I | A(G)), where I is the identity matrix, and let M(IA(G)) be the binary matroid represented by IA(G). Then suitably parametrized versions of the Tutte polynomial of M(IA(G)) yield the interlace polynomials of G, introduced by Arratia, Bollobás and Sorkin [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 92 (2004) 199-233; Combinatorica 24 (2004) 567-584]. Interlace polynomials subsequently introduced by other authors may be obtained from parametrized Tutte polynomials of the binary matroid represented by (I | A(G) | I+A(G)).
The generating function that records the sizes of directed circuit partitions of a connected 2-in, 2-out digraph D can be determined from the interlacement graph of D with respect to a directed Euler circuit; the same is true of the generating functions for other kinds of circuit partitions. The interlace polynomials of Arratia, Bollobás and Sorkin [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 92 (2004) 199-233; Combinatorica 24 (2004) 567-584] extend the corresponding functions from interlacement graphs to arbitrary graphs. We introduce a multivariate interlace polynomial that is an analogous extension of a mult…
The interlace polynomials introduced by Arratia, Bollobas and Sorkin extend to invariants of graphs with vertex weights, and these weighted interlace polynomials have several novel properties. One novel property is a version of the fundamental three-term formula q(G)=q(G-a)+q(G^{ab}-b)+((x-1)^{2}-1)q(G^{ab}-a-b) that lacks the last term. It follows that interlace polynomial computations can be represented by binary trees rather than mixed binary-ternary trees. Binary computation trees provide a description of $q(G)$ that is analogous to the activities description of the Tutte polynomial. If $G…
A theorem of Cohn and Lempel [J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 13 (1972), 83-89] gives an equality relating the number of circuits in a directed circuit partition of a 2-in, 2-out digraph to the GF(2)-nullity of an associated matrix. This equality is essentially equivalent to the relationship between directed circuit partitions of 2-in, 2-out digraphs and vertex-nullity interlace polynomials of interlace graphs. We present an extension of the Cohn-Lempel equality that describes arbitrary circuit partitions in (undirected) 4-regular graphs. The extended equality incorporates topological results that ha…
We generalize theories of graph, matroid, and ribbon-graph activities to delta-matroids. As a result, we obtain an activities based feasible-set expansion for a transition polynomial of delta-matroids defined by Brijder and Hoogeboom. This result yields feasible-set expansions for the two-variable Bollobás-Riordan and interlace polynomials of a delta-matroid. In the former case, the expansion obtained directly generalizes the activities expansions of the Tutte polynomial of graphs and matroids.
We provide a unified framework in which the interlace polynomial and several related graph polynomials are defined more generally for multimatroids and delta-matroids. Using combinatorial properties of multimatroids rather than graph-theoretical arguments, we find that various known results about these polynomials, including their recursive relations, are both more efficiently and more generally obtained. In addition, we obtain several interrelationships and results for polynomials on multimatroids and delta-matroids that correspond to new interrelationships and results for the corresponding g…
We show that the effect of principal pivot transform on the nullity values of the principal submatrices of a given (square) matrix is described by the symmetric difference operator (for sets). We consider its consequences for graphs, and in particular generalize the recursive relation of the interlace polynomial and simplify its proof.
The interlace polynomial q was introduced by Arratia, Bollobas, and Sorkin. It encodes many properties of the orbit of a graph under edge local complementation (ELC). The interlace polynomial Q, introduced by Aigner and van der Holst, similarly contains information about the orbit of a graph under local complementation (LC). We have previously classified LC and ELC orbits, and now give an enumeration of the corresponding interlace polynomials of all graphs of order up to 12. An enumeration of all circle graphs of order up to 12 is also given. We show that there exist graphs of all orders great…
Multimatroids generalize matroids, delta-matroids, and isotropic systems, and transition polynomials of multimatroids subsume various polynomials for these latter combinatorial structures, such as the interlace polynomial and the Tutte-Martin polynomial. We prove evaluations of the Tutte-Martin polynomial of isotropic systems from Bouchet directly and more efficiently in the context of transition polynomials of multimatroids. Moreover, we generalize some related evaluations of the transition polynomial of 4-regular graphs from Jaeger to multimatroids. These evaluations are obtained in a unifor…
In the companion paper [Linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs I. A polynomial-time algorithm, Algorithmica 78(1):342--377, 2017], we presented a characterization of the linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs, from which we derived an algorithm to compute it in polynomial time. In this paper, we investigate structural properties of distance-hereditary graphs based on this characterization. First, we prove that for a fixed tree $T$, every distance-hereditary graph of sufficiently large linear rank-width contains a vertex-minor isomorphic to $T$. We extend this property to bigg…
A non-hereditary Pollyanna class that is not strongly Pollyanna
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Gansu Center for Applied Mathematics, Lanzhou University（兰州大学数学与统计学院）；School of Mathematics and Statistics, Minnan Normal University（闽南师范大学数学与统计学院）
A result of Simonovits and Sós states that for any fixed graph $H$ and any $ε> 0$ there exists $δ> 0$ such that if $G$ is an $n$-vertex graph with the property that every $S \subseteq V(G)$ contains $p^{e(H)} |S|^{v(H)} \pm δn^{v(H)}$ labeled copies of $H$, then $G$ is quasirandom in the sense that every $S \subseteq V(G)$ contains $\frac{1}{2} p |S|^2 \pm εn^2$ edges. The original proof of this result makes heavy use of the regularity lemma, resulting in a bound on $δ^{-1}$ which is a tower of twos of height polynomial in $ε^{-1}$. We give an alternative proof of this theorem which avoids the…
The reconstruction conjecture has remained open for simple undirected graphs since it was suggested in 1941 by Kelly and Ulam. In an attempt to prove the conjecture, many graph invariants have been shown to be reconstructible from the vertex-deleted deck, and in particular, some prominent graph polynomials. Among these are the Tutte polynomial, the chromatic polynomial and the characteristic polynomial. We show that the interlace polynomial, the U -polynomial, the universal edge elimination polynomial xi and the colored versions of the latter two are reconstructible.
A result of Plotkin, Rao, and Smith implies that graphs with polynomial expansion have strongly sublinear separators. We prove a converse of this result showing that hereditary classes of graphs with strongly sublinear separators have polynomial expansion. This confirms a conjecture of the first author.
Hereditary properties of combinatorial structures: posets and oriented graphs
组合结构的一个遗传性质是一组结构（例如图、偏序集），它们在同构下是封闭的，在取诱导子结构（例如诱导子图）下是封闭的，并且包含任意大的结构。给定一个属性P，我们写P_n为不同的集合（即，非同构）结构，并将函数n-> |P_n|称为P的速度（或未标记速度）。此外，我们将P ^n写为P中具有标记1，.的顶点的不同标记结构的集合，n，并调用函数n->| P ^n|图的一个遗传性质的可能标号速度已被广泛研究，本文的目的是研究其他组合结构，即偏序集和定向图的可能标号速度。更精确地说，我们证明了（对于足够大的n），偏序集的遗传性质的标号速度要么是1，要么正好是多项式，要么至少是2^n-1。我们还表明，有一个初始的跳跃，在可能的未标记的偏序集，竞赛和有向图的遗传特性的速度，从有界到线性速度，并给出一个尖锐的下界的可能的线性速度在每种情况下。
The speed of a hereditary property $P$ is the number $P_n$ of $n$-vertex labelled graphs in $P$. It is known that the rates of growth of $P_n$ constitute discrete layers and the speed jumps, in particular, from constant to polynomial, from polynomial to exponential and from exponential to factorial. One more jump occurs when the entropy $\lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{\log_2 P_n}{\binom{n}{2}}$ changes from 0 to a nonzero value. In the present paper, for each of these jumps we identify a graph parameter responsible for it, i.e. we show that a jump of the speed coincides with a jump of the respective p…
A cycle-transversal of a graph G is a subset T of V(G) such that T intersects every cycle of G. A clique cycle-transversal, or cct for short, is a cycle-transversal which is a clique. Recognizing graphs which admit a cct can be done in polynomial time; however, no structural characterization of such graphs is known. We characterize distance-hereditary graphs admitting a cct in terms of forbidden induced subgraphs. This extends similar results for chordal graphs and cographs.
Given a graph G and integers b and w. The black-and-white coloring problem asks if there exist disjoint sets of vertices B and W with |B|=b and |W|=w such that no vertex in B is adjacent to any vertex in W. In this paper we show that the problem is polynomial when restricted to cographs, distance-hereditary graphs, interval graphs and strongly chordal graphs. We show that the problem is NP-complete on splitgraphs.
In earlier work we introduced the graph bracket polynomial of graphs with marked vertices, motivated by the fact that the Kauffman bracket of a link diagram D is determined by a looped, marked version of the interlacement graph associated to a directed Euler system of the universe graph of D. Here we extend the graph bracket to graphs whose vertices may carry different kinds of marks, and we show how multiply marked graphs encode interlacement with respect to arbitrary (undirected) Euler systems. The extended machinery brings together the earlier version and the graph-links of D. P. Ilyutko an…
We study the computational complexity of computing role colourings of graphs in hereditary classes. We are interested in describing the family of hereditary classes on which a role colouring with k colours can be computed in polynomial time. In particular, we wish to describe the boundary between the "hard" and "easy" classes. The notion of a boundary class has been introduced by Alekseev in order to study such boundaries. Our main results are a boundary class for the k-role colouring problem and the related k-coupon colouring problem which has recently received a lot of attention in the liter…
It is well known that the coefficients of the matching polynomial are unimodal. Unimodality of the coefficients (or their absolute values) of other graph polynomials have been studied as well. One way to prove unimodality is to prove real-rootedness.` Recently I. Beaton and J. Brown (2020) proved the for almost all graphs the coefficients of the domination polynomial form a unimodal sequence, and C. Barton, J. Brown and D. Pike (2020) proved that the forest polynomial (aka acyclic polynomial) is real-rooted iff $G$ is a forest. Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a graph property, and let $a_i(G)$ be the num…
Linear rank-width is a linearized variation of rank-width, and it is deeply related to matroid path-width. In this paper, we show that the linear rank-width of every $n$-vertex distance-hereditary graph, equivalently a graph of rank-width at most $1$, can be computed in time $\mathcal{O}(n^2\cdot \log_2 n)$, and a linear layout witnessing the linear rank-width can be computed with the same time complexity. As a corollary, we show that the path-width of every $n$-element matroid of branch-width at most $2$ can be computed in time $\mathcal{O}(n^2\cdot \log_2 n)$, provided that the matroid is gi…
Bandelt and Mulder's structural characterization of Bipartite Distance Hereditary graphs asserts that such graphs can be built inductively starting from a single vertex and by repeatedly adding either pending vertices or twins (i.e., vertices with the same neighborhood as an existing one). Dirac and Duffin's structural characterization of 2-connected series-parallel graphs asserts that such graphs can be built inductively starting from a single edge by adding either edges in series or in parallel. In this paper we prove that the two constructions are the same construction when bipartite graphs…
Answering a question of Simonovits and S\' os, Conlon, Fox, and Sudakov proved that for any nonempty graph $H$, and any $\varepsilon>0$, there exists $δ>0$ polynomial in $\varepsilon$, such that if $G$ is an $n$-vertex graph with the property that every $U\subseteq V(G)$ contains $p^{e(H)}|U|^{v(H)}\pmδn^{v(H)}$ labeled copies of $H$, then $G$ is $(p,\varepsilon)$-quasirandom in the sense that every subset $U\subseteq G$ contains $\frac{1}{2}p|U|^{2}\pm\varepsilon n^{2}$ edges. They conjectured that $δ$ may be taken to be linear in $\varepsilon$ and proved this in the case that $H$ is a comple…
A family of sets is $(p,q)$-intersecting if every nonempty subfamily of $p$ or fewer sets has at least $q$ elements in its total intersection. A family of sets has the $(p,q)$-Helly property if every nonempty $(p,q)$-intersecting subfamily has total intersection of cardinality at least $q$. The $(2,1)$-Helly property is the usual Helly property. A hypergraph is $(p,q)$-Helly if its edge family has the $(p,q)$-Helly property and hereditary $(p,q)$-Helly if each of its subhypergraphs has the $(p,q)$-Helly property. A graph is $(p,q)$-clique-Helly if the family of its maximal cliques has the $(p,…
Motivated by the `subgraphs world' view of the ferromagnetic Ising model, we develop a general approach to studying mixing times of Glauber dynamics based on subset expansion expressions for a class of graph polynomials. With a canonical paths argument, we demonstrate that the chains defined within this framework mix rapidly upon graphs of bounded tree-width. This extends known results on rapid mixing for the Tutte polynomial, the adjacency-rank ($R_2$-)polynomial and the interlace polynomial.
The Laplacian matching polynomial of a graph $G$, denoted by $\mathscr{L\hspace{-0.7mm}M}(G,x)$, is a new graph polynomial whose all roots are nonnegative real numbers. In this paper, we investigate the location of zeros of the Laplacian matching polynomials. Let $G$ be a connected graph. We show that $0$ is a root of $\mathscr{L\hspace{-0.7mm}M}(G, x)$ if and only if $G$ is a tree. We prove that the number of distinct positive zeros of $\mathscr{L\hspace{-0.7mm}M}(G,x)$ is at least equal to the length of the longest path in $G$. It is also established that the zeros of $\mathscr{L\hspace{-0.7…
The class of Bipartite Distance Hereditary (BDH) graphs is the intersection between bipartite domino-free and chordal bipartite graphs.\ Graphs in both the latter classes have linearly many maximal bicliques, implying the existence of polynomial-time algorithms for computing the associated Galois lattice.\ Such a lattice can indeed be built in $O(m\times n)$ worst case-time for a domino-free graph with $m$ edges and $n$ vertices.\ In this paper we give a sharp estimate on the number of the maximal bicliques of BDH graphs and exploit such result to give an $O(m)$ worst case time algorithm for c…
We prove that if $\mathcal{C}$ is a hereditary class of graphs that is polynomially $χ$-bounded, then the class of graphs that admit decompositions into pieces belonging to $\mathcal{C}$ along cuts of bounded rank is also polynomially $χ$-bounded. In particular, this implies that for every positive integer $k$, the class of graphs of cliquewidth at most $k$ is polynomially $χ$-bounded.
Clique-width is a well-studied graph parameter owing to its use in understanding algorithmic tractability: if the clique-width of a graph class ${\cal G}$ is bounded by a constant, a wide range of problems that are NP-complete in general can be shown to be polynomial-time solvable on ${\cal G}$. For this reason, the boundedness or unboundedness of clique-width has been investigated and determined for many graph classes. We survey these results for hereditary graph classes, which are the graph classes closed under taking induced subgraphs. We then discuss the algorithmic consequences of these r…
We consider the classical problems (Edge) Steiner Tree and Vertex Steiner Tree after restricting the input to some class of graphs characterized by a small set of forbidden induced subgraphs. We show a dichotomy for the former problem restricted to $(H_1,H_2)$-free graphs and a dichotomy for the latter problem restricted to $H$-free graphs. We find that there exists an infinite family of graphs $H$ such that Vertex Steiner Tree is polynomial-time solvable for $H$-free graphs, whereas there exist only two graphs $H$ for which this holds for Edge Steiner Tree. We also find that Edge Steiner Tree…
An identifying code of a graph is a subset of its vertices such that every vertex of the graph is uniquely identified by the set of its neighbours within the code. We show a dichotomy for the size of the smallest identifying code in classes of graphs closed under induced subgraphs. Our dichotomy is derived from the VC-dimension of the considered class C, that is the maximum VC-dimension over the hypergraphs formed by the closed neighbourhoods of elements of C. We show that hereditary classes with infinite VC-dimension have infinitely many graphs with an identifying code of size logarithmic in …
The independence gap of a graph was introduced by Ekim et al. (2018) as a measure of how far a graph is from being well-covered. It is defined as the difference between the maximum and minimum size of a maximal independent set. We investigate the independence gap of a graph from structural and algorithmic points of view, with a focus on classes of perfect graphs. Generalizing results on well-covered graphs due to Dean and Zito (1994) and Hujdurović et al. (2018), we express the independence gap of a perfect graph in terms of clique partitions and use this characterization to develop a polynomi…
Circle graphs are intersection graphs of chords in a circle and $k$-polygon graphs are intersection graphs of chords in a convex $k$-sided polygon where each chord has its endpoints on distinct sides. The $k$-polygon graphs, for $k \ge 2$, form an infinite chain of graph classes, each of which contains the class of permutation graphs. The union of all of those graph classes is the class of circle graphs. The polygon number $\gp(G)$ of a circle graph $G$ is the minimum $k$ such that $G$ is a $k$-polygon graph. Given a circle graph $G$ and an integer $k$, determining whether $\gp(G) \le k$ is NP…
The computational complexity of the Vertex Coloring problem is known for all hereditary classes of graphs defined by forbidding two connected five-vertex induced subgraphs, except for seven cases. We prove the polynomial-time solvability of four of these problems: for ($P_5$, dart)-free graphs, ($P_5$, banner)-free graphs, ($P_5$, bull)-free graphs, and (fork, bull)-free graphs.
The Maximum Weight Independent Set Problem (WIS) is a well-known NP-hard problem. A popular way to study WIS is to detect graph classes for which WIS can be solved in polynomial time, with particular reference to hereditary graph classes, i.e., defined by a hereditary graph property or equivalently by forbidding one or more induced subgraphs. Given two graphs $G$ and $H$, $G+H$ denotes the disjoint union of $G$ and $H$. This manuscript shows that (i) WIS can be solved for ($P_4+P_4$, Triangle)-free graphs in polynomial time, where a $P_4$ is an induced path of four vertices and a Triangle is a…
For graphs $G$ and $H$, an $H$-coloring of $G$ is an edge-preserving mapping from $V(G)$ to $V(H)$. In the $H$-Coloring problem the graph $H$ is fixed and we ask whether an instance graph $G$ admits an $H$-coloring. A generalization of this problem is $H$-ColoringExt, where some vertices of $G$ are already mapped to vertices of $H$ and we ask if this partial mapping can be extended to an $H$-coloring. We study the complexity of variants of $H$-Coloring in $F$-free graphs, i.e., graphs excluding a fixed graph $F$ as an induced subgraph. For integers $a,b,c \geq 1$, by $S_{a,b,c}$ we denote the …
We confirm a conjecture of Gartland and Lokshtanov [arXiv:2007.08761]: if for a hereditary graph class $\mathcal{G}$ there exists a constant $k$ such that no member of $\mathcal{G}$ contains a $k$-creature as an induced subgraph or a $k$-skinny-ladder as an induced minor, then there exists a polynomial $p$ such that every $G \in \mathcal{G}$ contains at most $p(|V(G)|)$ minimal separators. By a result of Fomin, Todinca, and Villanger [SIAM J. Comput. 2015] the latter entails the existence of polynomial-time algorithms for Maximum Weight Independent Set, Feedback Vertex Set and many other probl…
