In this article, Temperley's bijection between spanning trees of the square grid on the one hand, and perfect matchings (also known as dimer coverings) of the square grid on the other, is extended to the setting of general planar directed (and undirected) graphs, where edges carry nonnegative weights that induce a weighting on the set of spanning trees. We show that the weighted, directed spanning trees (often called arborescences) of any planar graph G can be put into a one-to-one weight-preserving correspondence with the perfect matchings of a related planar graph H.
One special case of this result is a bijection between perfect matchings of the hexagonal honeycomb lattice and directed spanning trees of a triangular lattice. Another special case gives a correspondence between perfect matchings of the ``square-octagon'' lattice and directed weighted spanning trees on a directed weighted version of the cartesian lattice.
In conjunction with results of Kenyon, our main theorem allows us to compute the measures of all cylinder events for random spanning trees on any (directed, weighted) planar graph. Conversely, in cases where the perfect matching model arises from a tree model, Wilson's algorithm allows us to quickly generate random samples of perfect matchings.
We give a bijection between partially directed paths in the symmetric wedge y= +/-x and matchings, which sends north steps to nestings. This gives a bijective proof of a result of Prellberg et al. that was first discovered through the corresponding generating functions: the number of partially directed paths starting at the origin confined to the symmetric wedge y= +/-x with k north steps is equal to the number of matchings on [2n] with k nestings.
Parking functions, classically defined in terms of cars with preferred parking spots on a directed path attempting to park there, arise in many combinatorial situations and have seen various generalizations. In particular, parking functions have been defined for general digraphs, which yields many more enumeration problems. For example, in a directed tree whose edges are orientated away from the root, it is unknown in general how the number of parking functions on it changes once the orientation is reversed, even in the case when the tree is a star. We show that this orientation reversal resul…
Classical parking functions can be defined in terms of drivers with preferred parking spaces searching a linear parking lot for an open parking spot. We may consider this linear parking lot as a collection of $n$ vertices (parking spots) arranged in a directed path. We generalize this notion to allow for more complicated "parking lots" and define parking functions on arbitrary directed graphs. We then consider a relationship proved by Lackner and Panholzer between parking functions on trees and "mapping digraphs" and we show that a similar relationship holds when edge orientations are reversed…
The question of shellability of complexes of directed trees was asked by R. Stanley. D. Kozlov showed that the existence of a complete source in a directed graph provides a shelling of its complex of directed trees. We will show that this property gives a shelling that is straightforward in some sense. Among the simplicial polytopes, only the crosspolytopes allow such a shelling. Furthermore, we show that the complex of directed trees of a complete double directed graph is a union of suitable spheres. We also investigate shellability of the maximal pure skeleton of a complex of directed trees.…
The number of spanning trees in a class of directed circulant graphs with generators depending linearly on the number of vertices $βn$, and in the $n$-th and $(n-1)$-th power graphs of the $βn$-cycle are evaluated as a product of $\lceilβ/2\rceil-1$ terms.
Given a tournament T, let h(T) be the smallest integer k such that every arc-coloring of T with k or more colors produces at least one out-directed spanning tree of T with no pair of arcs with the same color. In this paper we give the exact value of h(T).
We present an elementary proof of a generalization of Kirchoff's matrix tree theorem to directed, weighted graphs. The proof is based on a specific factorization of the Laplacian matrices associated to the graphs, which only involves the two incidence matrices that capture the graph's topology. We also point out how this result can be used to calculate principal eigenvectors of the Laplacian matrices.
For a digraph $D=(V(D), A(D))$, and a set $S\subseteq V(D)$ with $r\in S$ and $|S|\geq 2$, an $(S, r)$-tree is an out-tree $T$ rooted at $r$ with $S\subseteq V(T)$. Two $(S, r)$-trees $T_1$ and $T_2$ are said to be arc-disjoint if $A(T_1)\cap A(T_2)=\emptyset$. Two arc-disjoint $(S, r)$-trees $T_1$ and $T_2$ are said to be internally disjoint if $V(T_1)\cap V(T_2)=S$. Let $κ_{S,r}(D)$ and $λ_{S,r}(D)$ be the maximum number of internally disjoint and arc-disjoint $(S, r)$-trees in $D$, respectively. The generalized $k$-vertex-strong connectivity of $D$ is defined as $$κ_k(D)= \min \{κ_{S,r}(D)\…
We give an upper bound on the number of perfect matchings in simple graphs with a given number of vertices and edges. We apply this result to give an upper bound on the number of 2-factors in a directed complete bipartite balanced graph on 2n vertices. The upper bound is sharp for n even. For n odd we state a conjecture on a sharp upper bound.
We generalize a theorem of Knuth relating the oriented spanning trees of a directed graph G and its directed line graph LG. The sandpile group is an abelian group associated to a directed graph, whose order is the number of oriented spanning trees rooted at a fixed vertex. In the case when G is regular of degree k, we show that the sandpile group of G is isomorphic to the quotient of the sandpile group of LG by its k-torsion subgroup. As a corollary we compute the sandpile groups of two families of graphs widely studied in computer science, the de Bruijn graphs and Kautz graphs.
For an additive submonoid $\mathcal{M}$ of $\mathbb{R}_{\ge 0}$, the weight of an $\mathcal{M}$-labeled directed graph is the sum of all of its edge labels, while the content is the product of the labels. Having fixed $\mathcal{M}$ and a directed tree $E$, we prove a general result on the shape of directed $\mathcal{M}$-labeled graphs $Γ$ of weight $N\in \mathcal{M}$ maximizing the sum of the contents of all copies $E\subset Γ$. This specializes to recover a result of Hajac and Tobolski on the maximal number of length-$k$ paths in a directed acyclic graph. It also applies to prove a conjecture…
In this paper, we study Ramsey-type problems for directed graphs. We first consider the $k$-colour oriented Ramsey number of $H$, denoted by $\overrightarrow{R}(H,k)$, which is the least $n$ for which every $k$-edge-coloured tournament on $n$ vertices contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. We prove that $ \overrightarrow{R}(T,k) \le c_k|T|^k$ for any oriented tree $T$. This is a generalisation of a similar result for directed paths by Chvátal and by Gyárfás and Lehel, and answers a question of Yuster. In general, it is tight up to a constant factor. We also consider the $k$-colour directed Rams…
The minimum rank of a graph is the minimum possible rank of a real matrix whose zero-nonzero pattern is described by the graph. The current algorithms can compute efficiently the minimum rank of undirected trees. This paper provides an algorithm to compute in polynomial time the minimum rank of directed trees allowing loops.
The line graph LG of a directed graph G has a vertex for every edge of G and an edge for every path of length 2 in G. In 1967, Knuth used the Matrix-Tree Theorem to prove a formula for the number of spanning trees of LG, and he asked for a bijective proof. In this paper, we give a bijective proof of a generating function identity due to Levine which generalizes Knuth's formula. As a result of this proof we find a bijection between binary de Bruijn sequences of degree n and binary sequences of length 2^{n-1}. Finally, we determine the critical groups of all the Kautz graphs and de Bruijn graphs…
We characterise digraphs of directed treewidth one in terms of forbidden butterfly minors. Moreover, we show that there is a linear relation between the hypertree-width of the dual of the cycle hypergraph of D, i. e. the hypergraph with vertices V (D) where every hyperedge corresponds to a directed cycle in D, and the directed treewidth of D. Based on this we show that a digraph has directed treewidth one if and only if its cycle hypergraph is a hypertree.
This paper outlines a method to determine whether two label-regular directed trees, are isomorphic and when they are almost isomorphic. The approach involves reinterpreting label-regular directed trees as universal covers of rooted graphs. This allows us associate a unique graph with each isomorphism class of a label-regular directed tree. Additionally, by examining the graph monoid we can verify when two unfolding graphs produce almost isomorphic unfolding trees, thereby classifying unfolding trees up to almost isomorphism.
In 2001, Komlós, Sárközy and Szemerédi proved that, for each $α>0$, there is some $c>0$ and $n_0$ such that, if $n\geq n_0$, then every $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree at least $(1/2+α)n$ contains a copy of every $n$-vertex tree with maximum degree at most $cn/\log n$. We prove the corresponding result for directed graphs. That is, for each $α>0$, there is some $c>0$ and $n_0$ such that, if $n\geq n_0$, then every $n$-vertex directed graph with minimum semi-degree at least $(1/2+α)n$ contains a copy of every $n$-vertex oriented tree whose underlying maximum degree is at most $cn/\log n$. …
A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. The problem of finding rainbow subgraphs goes back to the work of Euler on transversals in Latin squares and was extensively studied since then. In this paper we consider two related questions concerning rainbow subgraphs of complete, edge-coloured graphs and digraphs. In the first part, we show that every properly edge-coloured complete directed graph contains a directed rainbow cycle of length $n-O(n^{4/5})$. This is motivated by an old problem of Hahn and improves a result of Gyarfas and Sarkozy.…
In this paper we consider the directed path-width and directed tree-width of recursively defined digraphs. As an important combinatorial tool, we show how the directed path-width and the directed tree-width can be computed for the disjoint union, order composition, directed union, and series composition of two directed graphs. These results imply the equality of directed path-width and directed tree-width for all digraphs which can be defined by these four operations. This allows us to show a linear-time solution for computing the directed path-width and directed tree-width of all these digrap…
In this paper, we give the following result: If $D$ is a digraph of order $n$, and if $d_{D}^{+}(u) + d_{D}^{-}(v) \ge n$ for every two distinct vertices $u$ and $v$ with $(u, v) \notin A(D)$, then $D$ has a directed $2$-factor with exactly $k$ directed cycles of length at least $3$, where $n \ge 12k+3$. This result is equivalent to the following result: If $G$ is a balanced bipartite graph of order $2n$ with partite sets $X$ and $Y$, and if $d_{G}(x)+d_{G}(y) \ge n + 2$ for every two vertices $x \in X$ and $y \in Y$ with $xy \notin E(G)$, then for every perfect matching $M$, $G$ has a $2$-fac…
In 1972, Woodall raised the following Ore type condition for directed Hamilton cycles in digraphs: Let $D$ be a digraph. If for every vertex pair $u$ and $v$, where there is no arc from $u$ to $v$, we have $d^+u)+d^-(v)\geq |D|$, then $D$ has a directed Hamilton cycle. By a correspondence between bipartite graphs and digraphs, the above result is equivalent to the following result of Las Vergnas: Let $G = (B,W)$ be a balanced bipartite graph. If for any $b \in B$ and $w \in W$, where $b$ and $w$ are nonadjacent, we have $d(w)+d(b) \geq |G|/2 + 1$, then every perfect matching of $G$ is containe…
In the work [4] tree-rooted planar cubic maps with marked directed edge (not in this tree) were enumerated. The number of such objects with $2n$ vertices is $C_{2n}\cdot C_{n+1}$, where $C_k$ is Catalan number. In this work a marked directed edge is not demanded, i.e. we enumerate tree-rooted planar cubic maps. Formulas are more complex, of course, but not significantly.
An $r$-matching in a graph $G$ is a collection of edges in $G$ such that the distance between any two edges is at least $r$. A $2$-matching is also called an induced matching. In this paper, we estimate the maximum number of $r$-matchings in a tree of fixed order. We also prove that the $n$-vertex path has the maximum number of induced matchings among all $n$-vertex trees.
Let $R=k[x_{1},\ldots,x_{n}]$, where $k$ is a field. The path ideal (of length $t\geq 2$) of a directed graph $G$ is the monomial ideal, denoted by $I_{t}(G)$, whose generators correspond to the directed paths of length $t$ in $G$. Let $Γ$ be a directed rooted tree. We characterize all such trees whose path ideals are unmixed and Cohen-Macaulay. Moreover, we show that $R/I_{t}(Γ)$ is Gorenstein if and only if the Stanley-Reisner simplicial complex of $I_{t}(Γ)$ is a matroid.
We determine upper and lower bounds for the number of maximum matchings (i.e., matchings of maximum cardinality) $m(T)$ of a tree $T$ of given order. While the trees that attain the lower bound are easily characterised, the trees with largest number of maximum matchings show a very subtle structure. We give a complete characterisation of these trees and derive that the number of maximum matchings in a tree of order $n$ is at most $O(1.391664^n)$ (the precise constant being an algebraic number of degree 14). As a corollary, we improve on a recent result by Górska and Skupień on the number of ma…
The matching energy is defined as the sum of the absolute values of the zeros of the matching polynomial of a graph, which is proposed first by Gutman and Wagner [The matching energy of a graph, Discrete Appl. Math. 160 (2012) 2177--2187]. And they gave some properties and asymptotic results of the matching energy. In this paper, we characterize the trees with $n$ vertices whose complements have the maximal, second-maximal and minimal matching energy. Further, we determine the trees with a perfect matching whose complements have the second-maximal matching energy. In particular, show that the …
In this paper, we prove almost tight bounds on the size of sound monotone switching networks accepting permutations sets of directed trees. This roughly corresponds to proving almost tight bounds bounds on the monotone memory efficiency of the directed ST-connectivity problem for the special case in which the input graph is guaranteed to have no path from s to t or be isomorphic to a specific directed tree.
For every $n\in\mathbb N$ we construct a finite graph $G$ such that every orientation $\vec G$ of $G$ contains an isometric copy of any oriented tree on $n$ vertices, and evaluate the smallest possible cardinality of $G$. On the other hand, we prove that every graph $G$ admits an orientation containing no directed $ω$-paths of infinite diameter.
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the maximum multiplicity of a root of the matching polynomial of a tree to be equal to the minimum number of vertex disjoint paths needed to cover it.
It has been previously shown by the authors that a directed graph on a linearly ordered set of edges (ordered graph) with adjacent unique source and sink (bipolar digraph) has a unique fully optimal spanning tree, that satisfies a simple criterion on fundamental cycle/cocycle directions. This result yields, for any ordered graph, a canonical bijection between bipolar orientations and spanning trees with internal activity 1 and external activity 0 in the sense of the Tutte polynomial. This bijection can be extended to all orientations and all spanning trees, yielding the active bijection, prese…
An $(s,t)$-matching in a bipartite graph $G=(U,V,E)$ is a subset of the edges $F$ such that each component of $G[F]$ is a tree with at most $t$ edges and each vertex in $U$ has $s$ neighbours in $G[H]$. We give sharp conditions for a bipartite graph to contain an $(s,t)$-matching. As a special case, we prove a conjecture of Bonacina, Galesi, Huynh and Wollan \cite{CNF}.
This paper starts with an observation that two infinite series of simplicial complexes, which a priori do not seem to have anything to do with each other, have the same homotopy type. One series consists of the complexes of directed forests on a double directed string, while the other one consists of Shapiro-Welker models for the spaces of hyperbolic polynomials with a triple root. We explain this coincidence in the more general context by finding an explicit homotopy equivalence between complexes of directed forests on a double directed tree, and doubly disconnecting complexes of a tree.
Sumner's universal tournament conjecture states that any tournament on $2n-2$ vertices contains a copy of any directed tree on $n$ vertices. We prove an asymptotic version of this conjecture, namely that any tournament on $(2+o(1))n$ vertices contains a copy of any directed tree on $n$ vertices. In addition, we prove an asymptotically best possible result for trees of bounded degree, namely that for any fixed $Δ$, any tournament on $(1+o(1))n$ vertices contains a copy of any directed tree on $n$ vertices with maximum degree at most $Δ$.
Partial 1-trees are undirected graphs of treewidth at most one. Similarly, partial 1-DAGs are directed graphs of KellyWidth at most two. It is well-known that an undirected graph is a partial 1-tree if and only if it has no K_3 minor. In this paper, we generalize this characterization to partial 1-DAGs. We show that partial 1-DAGs are characterized by three forbidden directed minors, K_3, N_4 and M_5.
We give a geometric realization of the polyhedra governed by the structure of associative algebras with co-inner products, or more precisely, governed by directed planar trees. Our explicit realization of these polyhedra, which include the associahedra in a special case, shows in particular that these polyhedra are homeomorphic to balls. We also calculate the number of vertices of the lowest generalized associahedra, giving appropriate generalizations of the Catalan numbers.
The canonical tree-decomposition theorem, given by Robertson and Seymour in their seminal graph minors series, turns out to be one of the most important tool in structural and algorithmic graph theory. In this paper, we provide the canonical tree decomposition theorem for digraphs. More precisely, we construct directed tree-decompositions of digraphs that distinguish all their tangles of order $k$, for any fixed integer $k$, in polynomial time. As an application of this canonical tree-decomposition theorem, we provide the following result for the directed disjoint paths problem: For every fixe…
In \cite{siebert2019linear} the authors present a set of integer programs (IPs) for the Steiner tree problem, which can be used for both, the directed and the undirected setting of the problem. Each IP finds an optimal Steiner tree with a specific structure. A solution with the lowest cost, corresponds to an optimal solution to the entire problem. The authors show that the linear programming relaxation of each IP is integral and, also, that each IP is polynomial in the size of the instance, consequently, they can be solved in polynomial time. The main issue is that the number of IPs to solve g…
We study the minimum size $f$ of a feedback vertex set in directed and undirected $n$-vertex graphs of given degeneracy or treewidth. In the undirected setting the bound $\frac{k-1}{k+1}n$ is known to be tight for graphs with bounded treewidth $k$ or bounded odd degeneracy $k$. We show that neither of the easy upper and lower bounds $\frac{k-1}{k+1}n$ and $\frac{k}{k+2}n$ can be exact for the case of even degeneracy. More precisely, for even degeneracy $k$ we prove that $f < \frac{k}{k+2}n$ and for every $ε>0$, there exists a $k$-degenerate graph for which $f\geq \frac{3k-2}{3k+4}n -ε$. For di…
The theory of complexes of directed trees was initiated by Kozlov to answer a question by Stanley, and later on, results from the theory were used by Babson and Kozlov in their proof of the Lovasz conjecture. We develop the theory and prove that complexes on directed acyclic graphs are shellable. A related concept is that of independence complexes: construct a simplicial complex on the vertex set of a graph, by including each independent set of vertices as a simplex. Two theorems used for breaking and gluing such complexes are proved and applied to generalize results by Kozlov. A fruitful rest…
A connected graph G is called matching covered if every edge of G is contained in a perfect matching. Perfect matching width is a width parameter for matching covered graphs based on a branch decomposition. It was introduced by Norine and intended as a tool for the structural study of matching covered graphs, especially in the context of Pfaffian orientations. Norine conjectured that graphs of high perfect matching width would contain a large grid as a matching minor, similar to the result on treewidth by Robertson and Seymour. In this paper we obtain the first results on perfect matching widt…
A matching complex of a simple graph $G$ is a simplicial complex with faces given by the matchings of $G$. The topology of matching complexes is mysterious; there are few graphs for which the homotopy type is known. Marietti and Testa showed that matching complexes of forests are contractible or homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres. We study two specific families of trees. For caterpillar graphs, we give explicit formulas for the number of spheres in each dimension and for perfect binary trees we find a strict connectivity bound. We also use a tool from discrete Morse theory called the \t…
We consider generalisations of tree width to directed graphs, that attracted much attention in the last fifteen years. About their relative strength with respect to "bounded width in one measure implies bounded width in the other" many problems remain unsolved. Only some results separating directed width measures are known. We give an almost complete picture of this relation. For this, we consider the cops and robber games characterising DAG-width and directed tree width (up to a constant factor). For DAG-width games, it is an open question whether the robber-monotonicity cost (the difference …
The aim of this note is to extend the result of Angel and Holroyd concerning the transience and the recurrence of transfinite rotor-router walks, for random initial configuration of rotors on homogeneous trees. We address the same question on directed covers of finite graphs, which are also called trees with finitely many cone types or periodic trees. Furthermore, we provide an example of a directed cover such that the rotor-router walk can be either recurrent or transient, depending only on the planar embedding of the periodic tree.
We derive tight bounds on the expected weights of several combinatorial optimization problems for random point sets of size $n$ distributed among the leaves of a balanced hierarchically separated tree. We consider {\it monochromatic} and {\it bichromatic} versions of the minimum matching, minimum spanning tree, and traveling salesman problems. We also present tight concentration results for the monochromatic problems.
We study minimal vertex covers and maximal matchings on trees. We pay special attention to the corresponding backbones i.e. these vertices that are occupied and those that are empty in every minimal vertex cover (resp. these egdes that are occupied and those that are empty in every maximal matching). The key result in our approach is that for trees, the backbones can be recovered from a particular tri-coloring which has a simple characterization. We give applications to the computation of some averages related to the enumeration of minimal vertex covers and maximal matchings in the random labe…
