Given graphs H_1,...,H_k, we study the minimum order of a graph G such that for each i, the induced copies of H_i in G cover V(G). We prove a general upper bound of twice the sum of the numbers m_i, where m_i is one less than the order of H_i. When k=2 and one graph is an independent set of size n, we determine the optimum within a constant. When k=2 and the graphs are a star and an independent set, we determine the answer exactly.
Rigidity, arising in discrete geometry, is the property of a structure that does not flex. Laman provides a combinatorial characterization of rigid graphs in the Euclidean plane, and thus rigid graphs in the Euclidean plane have applications in graph theory. We discover a sufficient partition condition of packing spanning rigid subgraphs and spanning trees. As a corollary, we show that a simple graph $G$ contains a packing of $k$ spanning rigid subgraphs and $l$ spanning trees if $G$ is $(4k+2l)$-edge-connected, and $G-Z$ is essentially $(6k+2l - 2k|Z|)$-edge-connected for every $Z\subset V(G)…
We prove two estimates for the expectation of the exponential of a complex function of a random permutation or subset. Using this theory, we find asymptotic expressions for the expected number of copies and induced copies of a given graph in a uniformly random graph with degree sequence $(d_1,\ldots,d_n)$ as $n \rightarrow \infty$. We also determine the expected number of spanning trees in this model. The range of degrees covered includes $d_j = λn + O(n^{1/2+\varepsilon})$ for some $λ$ bounded away from $0$ and $1$.
A graph $G$ contains another graph $H$ as an immersion if $H$ can be obtained from a subgraph of $G$ by splitting off edges and removing isolated vertices. In this paper, we prove an edge-variant of the Erdős-Pósa property with respect to the immersion containment in 4-edge-connected graphs. More precisely, we prove that for every graph $H$, there exists a function $f$ such that for every 4-edge-connected graph $G$, either $G$ contains $k$ pairwise edge-disjoint subgraphs each containing $H$ as an immersion, or there exists a set of at most $f(k)$ edges of $G$ intersecting all such subgraphs. …
Let $k$ be a positive integer. Let $G$ be a balanced bipartite graph of order $2n$ with bipartition $(X, Y)$, and $S$ a subset of $X$. Suppose that every pair of nonadjacent vertices $(x,y)$ with $x\in S, y\in Y$ satisfies $d(x)+d(y)\geq n+1$. We show that if $|S|\geq 2k+2$, then $G$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles covering $S$ such that each of the $k$ cycles contains at least two vertices of $S$. Here, both the degree condition and the lower bound of $|S|$ are best possible. And we also show that if $|S|=2k+1$, then $G$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles such that each of the $k$ cycles contains at l…
Let $H$ be a directed acyclic graph other than a rooted star. It is known that there are constants $c(H)$ and $C(H)$ such that the following holds for the complete directed graph $D_n$. There are at most $C\log n$ directed acyclic subgraphs of $D_n$ that cover every $H$-copy of $D_n$, while fewer than $c\log n$ directed acyclic subgraphs of $D_n$ do not cover all $H$-copies. Here this dichotomy is considerably strengthened. Let ${\vec G}(n,p)$ denote the random directed graph. The {\em fractional arboricity} of $H$ is $a(H) = max \{\frac{|E(H')|}{|V(H')|-1}\}$, where the maximum is over all no…
The complexity of approximating PSPACE-Complete problems for hierarchical specifications
We extend the concept of polynomial time approximation algorithms to apply to problems for hierarchically specified graphs, many of which are PSPACE-complete. Assuming P != PSPACE, the existence or nonexistence of such efficient approximation algorithms is characterized, for several standard graph theoretic and combinatorial problems. We present polynomial time approximation algorithms for several standard PSPACE-hard problems considered in the literature. In contrast, we show that unless P = PSPACE, there is no polynomial time epsilon-approximation for any epsilon>0, for several other problem…
Zero forcing parameters, associated with graphs, have been studied for over a decade, and have gained popularity as the number of related applications grows. In particular, it is well-known that such parameters are related to certain vertex coverings. Continuing along these lines, we investigate positive zero forcing within the context of certain clique coverings. A key object considered here is the compressed cliques graph. We study a number of properties associated with the compressed cliques graph, including: uniqueness, forbidden subgraphs, connections to Johnson graphs, and positive zero …
We study the relationship between the vertices of an up-monotone polyhedron $R$ and those of the polytope $P$ obtained by truncating $R$ with the unit hypercube. When $R$ has binary vertices, we characterize the vertices of $P$ in terms of the vertices of $R$, show their integrality, and prove that the 1-skeleton of $R$ is an induced subgraph of the 1-skeleton of $P$. We conclude by applying our findings to settle a claim in the original paper.
The degree-constrained subgraph problem asks for a subgraph of a given graph such that the degree of each vertex is within some specified bounds. We study the following reconfiguration variant of this problem: Given two solutions to a degree-constrained subgraph instance, can we transform one solution into the other by adding and removing individual edges, such that each intermediate subgraph satisfies the degree constraints and contains at least a certain minimum number of edges? This problem is a generalization of the matching reconfiguration problem, which is known to be in P. We show that …
We prove that if $M$ is a maximal $k$-edge-colorable subgraph of a multigraph $G$ and if $F = \{v \in V(G) : d_M(v) \leq k-μ(v)\}$, then $d_F(v) \leq d_M(v)$ for all $v \in F$. (When $G$ is a simple graph, the set $F$ is just the set of vertices having degree less than $k$ in $M$.) This implies Vizing's Theorem as well as a special case of Tuza's Conjecture on packing and covering of triangles. A more detailed version of our result also implies Vizing's Adjacency Lemma for simple graphs.
Given a $k$-colouring of the edges of the complete graph $K_n$, are there $k-1$ monochromatic components that cover its vertices? This important special case of the well-known Lovász-Ryser conjecture is still open. In this paper we consider a strengthening of this question, where we insist that the covering sets are not merely connected but have bounded diameter. In particular, we prove that for any colouring of $E(K_n)$ with 4 colours, there is a choice of sets $A_1, A_2, A_3$ that cover all vertices, and colours $c_1, c_2, c_3$, such that for each $i = 1,2,3$ the monochromatic subgraph induc…
A graph $H$ is an immersion of a graph $G$ if $H$ can be obtained by some sugraph $G$ after lifting incident edges. We prove that there is a polynomial function $f:\Bbb{N}\times\Bbb{N}\rightarrow\Bbb{N}$, such that if $H$ is a connected planar subcubic graph on $h>0$ edges, $G$ is a graph, and $k$ is a non-negative integer, then either $G$ contains $k$ vertex/edge-disjoint subgraphs, each containing $H$ as an immersion, or $G$ contains a set $F$ of $f(k,h)$ vertices/edges such that $G\setminus F$ does not contain $H$ as an immersion.
Given a simple graph $G$, a set $C \subseteq V(G)$ is a neighborhood cover set if every edge and vertex of $G$ belongs to some $G[v]$ with $v \in C$, where $G[v]$ denotes the subgraph of $G$ induced by the closed neighborhood of the vertex $v$. Two elements of $E(G) \cup V(G)$ are neighborhood-independent if there is no vertex $v\in V(G)$ such that both elements are in $G[v]$. A set $S\subseteq V(G)\cup E(G)$ is neighborhood-independent if every pair of elements of $S$ is neighborhood-independent. Let $ρ_{\mathrm n}(G)$ be the size of a minimum neighborhood cover set and $α_{\mathrm n}(G)$ of …
Gallai asked in 1984 if any $k$-critical graph on $n$ vertices contains at least $n$ distinct $(k-1)$-critical subgraphs. The answer is trivial for $k\leq 3$. Improving a result of Stiebitz, Abbott and Zhou proved in 1995 that for all $k\geq 4$, such graph contains $Ω(n^{1/(k-1)})$ distinct $(k-1)$-critical subgraphs. Since then no progress had been made until very recently, Hare resolved the case $k=4$ by showing that any $4$-critical graph on $n$ vertices contains at least $(8n-29)/3$ odd cycles. In this paper, we mainly focus on 4-critical graphs and develop some novel tools for counting cy…
The problem of computing induced subgraphs that satisfy some specified restrictions arises in various applications of graph algorithms and has been well studied. In this paper, we consider the following Balanced Connected Subgraph (shortly, BCS) problem. The input is a graph $G=(V,E)$, with each vertex in the set $V$ having an assigned color, "red" or "blue". We seek a maximum-cardinality subset $V'\subseteq V$ of vertices that is color-balanced (having exactly $|V'|/2$ red nodes and $|V'|/2$ blue nodes), such that the subgraph induced by the vertex set $V'$ in $G$ is connected. We show that t…
A $(v,k,λ)$-covering is a pair $(V, \mathcal{B})$, where $V$ is a $v$-set of points and $\mathcal{B}$ is a collection of $k$-subsets of $V$ (called blocks), such that every unordered pair of points in $V$ is contained in at least $λ$ blocks in $\mathcal{B}$. The excess of such a covering is the multigraph on vertex set $V$ in which the edge between vertices $x$ and $y$ has multiplicity $r_{xy}-λ$, where $r_{xy}$ is the number of blocks which contain the pair $\{x,y\}$. A covering is symmetric if it has the same number of blocks as points. Bryant et al.(2011) adapted the determinant related arg…
This note presents a new spectral version of the graph Zarankiewicz problem: How large can be the maximum eigenvalue of the signless Laplacian of a graph of order $n$ that does not contain a specified complete bipartite subgraph. A conjecture is stated about general complete bipartite graphs, which is proved for infinitely many cases. More precisely, it is shown that if $G$ is a graph of order $n,$ with no subgraph isomorphic to $K_{2,s+1},$ then the largest eigenvalue $q(G)$ of the signless Laplacian of $G$ satisfies \[ q(G)\leq\frac{n+2s}{2}+\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{(n-2s)^{2}+8s}, \] with equality …
The triangle graph of a graph $G$, denoted by ${\cal T}(G)$, is the graph whose vertices represent the triangles ($K_3$ subgraphs) of $G$, and two vertices of ${\cal T}(G)$ are adjacent if and only if the corresponding triangles share an edge. In this paper, we characterize graphs whose triangle graph is a cycle and then extend the result to obtain a characterization of $C_n$-free triangle graphs. As a consequence, we give a forbidden subgraph characterization of graphs $G$ for which ${\cal T}(G)$ is a tree, a chordal graph, or a perfect graph. For the class of graphs whose triangle graph is p…
Mader conjectured that for any tree $T$ of order $m$, every $k$-connected graph $G$ with minimum degree at least $\lfloor\frac{3k}{2}\rfloor +m-1$ contains a subtree $T'\cong T$ such that $G-V(T')$ is $k$-connected. In this paper, we give a characterization for a subgraph to contain an embedding of a specified tree avoiding some vertex. As a corollary, we confirm Mader's conjecture for $k\leq3$.
Many graph coloring proofs proceed by showing that a minimal counterexample to the theorem being proved cannot contain certain configurations, and then showing that each graph under consideration contains at least one such configuration; these configurations are called \emph{reducible} for that theorem. (A \emph{configuration} is a subgraph $H$, along with specified degrees $d_G(v)$ in the original graph $G$ for each vertex of $H$.) We give a general framework for showing that configurations are reducible for edge-coloring. A particular form of reducibility, called \emph{fixability}, can be co…
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford（牛津大学数学研究所）；Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw（华沙大学信息学研究所）；Theoretical Computer Science Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science and Doctoral School of Exact and Natural Sciences, Jagiellonian University（雅盖隆大学数学与计算机科学学院理论计算机科学系及精确与自然科学博士学院）；School of Mathematics, Shandong University（山东大学数学学院）；Data Science Institute, Shandong University（山东大学数据科学研究院）
Covering arrays on graphs: qualitative independence graphs and extremal set partition theory
本文主要研究覆盖数组的推广，覆盖数组在图上的推广。Z_k^n中的两个向量v，w是定性独立的，如果对Z_k x Z_k中的所有序偶（a，b），向量中存在位置i，其中（a，b）=（v_i，w_i）。覆盖数组是一个具有任何一对行是定性独立的性质的数组。图的覆盖数组是指图的每个顶点都有一行的数组，且具有这样的性质：对应于邻顶点的任意两行是定性独立的。在覆盖数组中添加图结构使得使用图论的方法来研究这些设计成为可能。在这篇论文中，我们定义了一类图，称为定性独立图。一个图有给定参数的覆盖阵列，当且仅当存在从该图到一个特定的定性独立图的同态。定性独立图中的团与覆盖数组有关，独立集与相交划分系统有关。已知最优二元覆盖阵列的确切大小可以使用Sperner定理和Erdos-Ko-Rado定理来确定。由于一般覆盖阵列的行对应于集合划分，我们给出了Sperner定理和Erdos-Ko-Rado定理在集合划分系统中的推广。我们还考虑了一般定性独立图的一个子图，称为一致定性独立图。我们给出了这些图中的几个图的谱，并猜想它们是一个关联图。我们还给出了一个新的覆盖阵列的结构，它产生了许多新的最佳覆盖阵列的大小的上界。
Paths $P_1,\ldots, P_k$ in a graph $G=(V,E)$ are mutually induced if any two distinct $P_i$ and $P_j$ have neither common vertices nor adjacent vertices. The Induced Disjoint Paths problem is to decide if a graph $G$ with $k$ pairs of specified vertices $(s_i,t_i)$ contains $k$ mutually induced paths $P_i$ such that each $P_i$ starts from $s_i$ and ends at $t_i$. This is a classical graph problem that is NP-complete even for $k=2$. We introduce a natural generalization, Induced Disjoint Connected Subgraphs: instead of connecting pairs of terminals, we must connect sets of terminals. We give al…
An ordinary voltage graph embedding of a graph in a surface encodes a certain kind of highly symmetric covering space of that surface. Given an ordinary voltage graph embedding of a graph $G$ in a surface with voltage group $A$ and a connected subgraph $H$ of $G$, we define special subgroups of $A$ that depend on $H$ and show how cosets of these groups in $A$ can be used to find topological information concerning the derived embedding without constructing the whole covering space. Our strongest theorems treat the case that $H$ is a cycle and the fiber over $H$ is a disjoint union of cycles wit…
If $\mathcal{W}$ is the simple random walk on the square lattice $\mathbb{Z}^2$, then $\mathcal{W}$ induces a random walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ on any spanning subgraph $G\subset \mathbb{Z}^2$ of the lattice as follows: viewing $\mathcal{W}$ as a uniformly random infinite word on the alphabet $\{\mathbf{x}, -\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{y}, -\mathbf{y} \}$, the walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ starts at the origin and follows the directions specified by $\mathcal{W}$, only accepting steps of $\mathcal{W}$ along which the walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ does not exit $G$. For any fixed subgraph $G \subset \mathbb{Z}^2$, the walk $\…
We find families of graphs $G$ and subgraphs $H$ of $G$ such that the number of edge colorings of $G$ avoiding a monochromatic coloring of $H$ is determined by lattice point counts or a Hodge structure on the cohomology of a certain toric variety. In general, this gives a class of ``anti-Ramsey theory problems'' with a geometric structure. For example, we find one for Ramsey numbers of classes of such graphs. The key observation is that our previous result expressing simplicial chromatic polynomials in terms of $h$-vectors of auxiliary simplicial complexes can be reinterpreted as one on edge c…
This is the sixth in a series of articles devoted to showing that a typical covering map of large degree to a fixed, regular graph has its new adjacency eigenvalues within the bound conjectured by Alon for random regular graphs. In this article we show that if the fixed graph is regular Ramanujan, then the {\em algebraic power} of the model of random covering graphs is $+\infty$. This implies a number of interesting results, such as (1) one obtains the upper and lower bounds---matching to within a multiplicative constant---for the probability that a random covering map has some new adjacency e…
Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a family of graphs, and let $p,r$ be nonnegative integers. The \textsc{$(p,r,\mathcal{F})$-Covering} problem asks whether for a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, there exists a set $D$ of at most $k$ vertices in $G$ such that $G^p\setminus N_G^r[D]$ has no induced subgraph isomorphic to a graph in $\mathcal{F}$, where $G^p$ is the $p$-th power of $G$. The \textsc{$(p,r,\mathcal{F})$-Packing} problem asks whether for a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, $G^p$ has $k$ induced subgraphs $H_1,\ldots,H_k$ such that each $H_i$ is isomorphic to a graph in $\mathcal{F}$, and for distinct $…
Let $G$ be a graph and $T$ be a vertex subset of $G$ with even cardinality. A $T$-join of $G$ is a subset $J$ of edges such that a vertex of $G$ is incident with an odd number of edges in $J$ if and only if the vertex belongs to $T$. Minimum $T$-joins have many applications in combinatorial optimizations. In this paper, we show that a minimum $T$-join of a connected graph $G$ has at most $|E(G)|-\frac 1 2 |E(\widehat{\, G\,})|$ edges where $\widehat{\,G\,}$ is the maximum bidegeless subgraph of $G$. Further, we are able to use this result to show that every flow-admissible signed graph $(G,σ)$…
A graph $G$ is called normal if there exist two coverings, $\mathbb{C}$ and $\mathbb{S}$ of its vertex set such that every member of $\mathbb{C}$ induces a clique in $G$, every member of $\mathbb{S}$ induces an independent set in $G$ and $C \cap S \neq \emptyset$ for every $C \in \mathbb{C}$ and $S \in \mathbb{S}$. It has been conjectured by De Simone and Körner in 1999 that a graph $G$ is normal if $G$ does not contain $C_5$, $C_7$ and $\overline{C_7}$ as an induced subgraph. We disprove this conjecture.
