Half-integral packing of odd cycles through prescribed vertices

The well-known theorem of Erd?s-Pósa says that a graph G has either k disjoint cycles or a vertex set X of order at most f(k) for some function f such that G\X is a forest. Starting with this result, there are many results concerning packing and covering cycles in graph theory and combinatorial optimization. In this paper, we discuss packing disjoint S-cycles, i.e., cycles that are required to go through a set S of vertices. For this problem, Kakimura-Kawarabayashi-Marx (2011) and Pontecorvi-Wollan (2010) recently showed the Erd?s-Pósa-type result holds. We further try to generalize this result to packing S-cycles of odd length. In contrast to packing S-cycles, the Erd?s-Pósa-type result does not hold for packing odd S-cycles. We then relax packing odd S-cycles to half-integral packing, and show the Erd?s-Pósa-type result for the half-integral packing of odd S-cycles, which is a generalization of Reed (1999) when S=V. That is, we show that given an integer k and a vertex set S, a graph G has either 2k odd S-cycles so that each vertex is in at most two of these cycles, or a vertex set X of order at most f(k) (for some function f) such that G\X has no odd S-cycle.     

Packing cycles through prescribed vertices under modularity constraints

The well-known theorem of Erd?s–Pósa says that either a graph G has k disjoint cycles or there is a vertex set X   of order at most f(k)$f(k)$ for some function f   such that G?X$G?X$ is a forest. Starting with this result, there are many results concerning packing and covering cycles in graph theory and combinatorial optimization.     

Power inequalities and spectral dominance of generalized matrix norms

A generalized matrix norm G dominates the spectral radius for all A?M_n(C) (i) if for some positive integer k the rule G(A^k) ? G(A)^k holds for all A?M_n(C) and (ii) if and only if for each A?M_n(C) there exists a constant γ_A such that G(A^k) ? γ_AG(A)^kfor all positive integers k. Other results and examples are also given concerning spectrally dominant generalized matrix norms.     

Some remarks on the odd hadwiger’s conjecture

We say that H has an odd complete minor of order at least l if there are l vertex disjoint trees in H such that every two of them are joined by an edge, and in addition, all the vertices of trees are two-colored in such a way that the edges within the trees are bichromatic, but the edges between trees are monochromatic. Gerards and Seymour conjectured that if a graph has no odd complete minor of order l, then it is (l ? 1)-colorable. This is substantially stronger than the well-known conjecture of Hadwiger. Recently, Geelen et al. proved that there exists a constant c such that any graph with no odd K _k -minor is ck√logk-colorable. However, it is not known if there exists an absolute constant c such that any graph with no odd K _k -minor is ck-colorable. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, we shall first prove that, for any k, there exists a constant f(k) such that every (496k + 13)-connected graph with at least f(k) vertices has either an odd complete minor of size at least k or a vertex set X of order at most 8k such that G–X is bipartite. Since any bipartite graph does not contain an odd complete minor of size at least three, the second condition is necessary. This is an analogous result of Böhme et al. We also prove that every graph G on n vertices has an odd complete minor of size at least n/2α(G) ? 1, where α(G) denotes the independence number of G. This is an analogous result of Duchet and Meyniel. We obtain a better result for the case α(G)= 3.     

Circumference, chromatic number and online coloring

Erd?s conjectured that if G is a triangle free graph of chromatic number at least k≥3, then it contains an odd cycle of length at least k ^2?o(1) [13,15]. Nothing better than a linear bound ([3], Problem 5.1.55 in [16]) was so far known. We make progress on this conjecture by showing that G contains an odd cycle of length at least Ω(k log logk). Erd?s’ conjecture is known to hold for graphs with girth at least five. We show that if a graph with girth four is C ₅ free, then Erd?s’ conjecture holds. When the number of vertices is not too large we can prove better bounds on χ. We also give bounds on the chromatic number of graphs with at most r cycles of length 1 mod k, or at most s cycles of length 2 mod k, or no cycles of length 3 mod k. Our techniques essentially consist of using a depth first search tree to decompose the graph into ordered paths, which are then fed to an online coloring algorithm. Using this technique we give simple proofs of some old results, and also obtain several other results. We also obtain a lower bound on the number of colors which an online coloring algorithm needs to use to color triangle free graphs.     

Note on lower bounds for the rank of a matrix

The following results are proved: Let A = (a_ij) be an n × n complex matrix, n ? 2, and let k be a fixed integer, 1 ? k ? n ? 1.(1) If there exists a monotonic G-function f = (f₁,…,f_n) such that for every subset of S of {1,…,n} consisting of k + 1 elements we have

$\text{Π}\text{i∈S}\text{f}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{(A)<}\text{Π}\text{i∈S}\text{|a}{}_{\mathrm{ii}}\text{|,}$

then the rank of A is ? n ? k + 1. (2) If A is irreducible and if there exists a G-function f = (f₁,…,f_n) such that for every subset of S of {1,…,n} consisting of k + 1 elements we have

$\text{Π}\text{i∈S}\text{f}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{(A)<}\text{Π}\text{i∈S}\text{|a}{}_{\mathrm{ii}}\text{|,}$

then the rank of A is ? n ? k + 1 if k ? 2, n ? 3; it is ? n ? 1 if k = 1.     

Edge-connectivity and edge-superconnectivity in sequence graphs

Given an integer k?1 and any graph G, the sequence graph S_k(G) is the graph whose set of vertices is the set of all walks of length k in G. Moreover, two vertices of S_k(G) are joined by an edge if and only if their corresponding walks are adjacent in G.In this paper we prove sufficient conditions for a sequence graph S_k(G) to be maximally edge-connected and edge-superconnected depending on the parity of k and on the vertex-connectivity of the original graph G.     

A note on Roman domination in graphs

Let G=(V,E) be a simple graph. A subset S⊆V is a dominating set of G, if for any vertex u∈V-S, there exists a vertex v∈S such that uv∈E. The domination number of G, γ(G), equals the minimum cardinality of a dominating set. A Roman dominating function on graph G=(V,E) is a function f:V→{0,1,2} satisfying the condition that every vertex v for which f(v)=0 is adjacent to at least one vertex u for which f(u)=2. The weight of a Roman dominating function is the value f(V)=∑_v∈Vf(v). The Roman domination number of a graph G, denoted by γ_R(G), equals the minimum weight of a Roman dominating function on G. In this paper, for any integer k(2?k?γ(G)), we give a characterization of graphs for which γ_R(G)=γ(G)+k, which settles an open problem in [E.J. Cockayne, P.M. Dreyer Jr, S.M. Hedetniemi et al. On Roman domination in graphs, Discrete Math. 278 (2004) 11-22].     

On judicious bipartitions of graphs

For a positive integer m, let f(m) be the maximum value t such that any graph with m edges has a bipartite subgraph of size at least t, and let g(m) be the minimum value s such that for any graph G with m edges there exists a bipartition V (G)=V ₁?V ₂ such that G has at most s edges with both incident vertices in V _i . Alon proved that the limsup of \(f\left( m \right) - \left( {m/2 + \sqrt {m/8} } \right)\) tends to infinity as m tends to infinity, establishing a conjecture of Erd?s. Bollobás and Scott proposed the following judicious version of Erd?s' conjecture: the limsup of \(m/4 + \left( {\sqrt {m/32} - g(m)} \right)\) tends to infinity as m tends to infinity. In this paper, we confirm this conjecture. Moreover, we extend this conjecture to k-partitions for all even integers k. On the other hand, we generalize Alon's result to multi-partitions, which should be useful for generalizing the above Bollobás-Scott conjecture to k-partitions for odd integers k.