Weighted fusion graphs: Merging properties and watersheds

This paper deals with the mathematical properties of watersheds in weighted graphs linked to region merging methods, as used in image analysis.In a graph, a cleft (or a binary watershed) is a set of vertices that cannot be reduced, by point removal, without changing the number of regions (connected components) of its complement. To obtain a watershed adapted to morphological region merging, it has been shown that one has to use the topological thinnings introduced by M. Couprie and G. Bertrand. Unfortunately, topological thinnings do not always produce thin clefts.Therefore, we introduce a new transformation on vertex weighted graphs, called C-watershed, that always produces a cleft. We present the class of perfect fusion graphs, for which any two neighboring regions can be merged, while preserving all other regions, by removing from the cleft the points adjacent to both. An important theorem of this paper states that, on these graphs, the C-watersheds are topological thinnings and the corresponding divides are thin clefts. We propose a linear-time immersion-like algorithm to compute C-watersheds on perfect fusion graphs, whereas, in general, a linear-time topological thinning algorithm does not exist. Furthermore, we prove that this algorithm is monotone in the sense that the vertices are processed in increasing order of weight. Finally, we derive some characterizations of perfect fusion graphs based on the thinness properties of both C-watersheds and topological watersheds.     

The Zero-Divisor Graph Associated to a Semigroup

The zero-divisor graph of a commutative semigroup with zero is the graph whose vertices are the nonzero zero-divisors of the semigroup, with two distinct vertices adjacent if the product of the corresponding elements is zero. New criteria to identify zero-divisor graphs are derived using both graph-theoretic and algebraic methods. We find the lowest bound on the number of edges necessary to guarantee a graph is a zero-divisor graph. In addition, the removal or addition of vertices to a zero-divisor graph is investigated by using equivalence relations and quotient sets. We also prove necessary and sufficient conditions for determining when regular graphs and complete graphs with more than two triangles attached are zero-divisor graphs. Lastly, we classify several graph structures that satisfy all known necessary conditions but are not zero-divisor graphs.     

The bondage number of graphs on topological surfaces and Teschner’s conjecture

The bondage number of a graph is the smallest number of its edges whose removal results in a graph having a larger domination number. We provide constant upper bounds for the bondage number of graphs on topological surfaces, and improve upper bounds for the bondage number in terms of the maximum vertex degree and the orientable and non-orientable genera of graphs. Also, we present stronger upper bounds for graphs with no triangles and graphs with the number of vertices larger than a certain threshold in terms of graph genera. This settles Teschner’s Conjecture in affirmative for almost all graphs. As an auxiliary result, we show tight lower bounds for the number of vertices of graphs 2-cell embeddable on topological surfaces of a given genus.     

Vertex Ordering Characterizations of Graphs of Bounded Asteroidal Number

Asteroidal Triple‐free (AT‐free) graphs have received considerable attention due to their inclusion of various important graphs families, such as interval and cocomparability graphs. The asteroidal number of a graph is the size of a largest subset of vertices such that the removal of the closed neighborhood of any vertex in the set leaves the remaining vertices of the set in the same connected component. (AT‐free graphs have asteroidal number at most 2.) In this article, we characterize graphs of bounded asteroidal number by means of a vertex elimination ordering, thereby solving a long‐standing open question in algorithmic graph theory. Similar characterizations are known for chordal, interval, and cocomparability graphs.     

On pseudosimilarity in trees

Two vertices u and v in a graph G are said to be removal-similar if G\u ? G\v. Vertices which are removal-similar but not similar are said to be pseudosimilar. A characterization theorem is presented for trees (later extended to forests and block graphs) with pseudosimilar vertices. It follows from this characterization that it is not possible to have three or more mutually pseudosimilar vertices in trees. Furthermore, removal-similarity combined with an extension of removal-similarity to include the removal of first neighbourhoods of vertices is sufficient to imply similarity in trees. Neither of these results holds, in general, if we replace trees by arbitrary graphs.     

Weakly triangulated graphs

A graph is triangulated if it has no chordless cycle with four or more vertices. It follows that the complement of a triangulated graph cannot contain a chordless cycle with five or more vertices. We introduce a class of graphs (namely, weakly triangulated graphs) which includes both triangulated graphs and complements of triangulated graphs (we define a graph as weakly triangulated if neither it nor its complement contains a chordless cycle with five or more vertices). Our main result is a structural theorem which leads to a proof that weakly triangulated graphs are perfect.     

On a conjecture of Brouwer involving the connectivity of strongly regular graphs

In this paper, we study a conjecture of Andries E. Brouwer from 1996 regarding the minimum number of vertices of a strongly regular graph whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components.We show that strongly regular graphs constructed from copolar spaces and from the more general spaces called Δ-spaces are counterexamples to Brouwer?s Conjecture. Using J.I. Hall?s characterization of finite reduced copolar spaces, we find that the triangular graphs T(m), the symplectic graphs Sp(2r,q) over the field Fq (for any q prime power), and the strongly regular graphs constructed from the hyperbolic quadrics O⁺(2r,2) and from the elliptic quadrics O⁻(2r,2) over the field F₂, respectively, are counterexamples to Brouwer?s Conjecture. For each of these graphs, we determine precisely the minimum number of vertices whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components. While we are not aware of an analogue of Hall?s characterization theorem for Δ-spaces, we show that complements of the point graphs of certain finite generalized quadrangles are point graphs of Δ-spaces and thus, yield other counterexamples to Brouwer?s Conjecture.We prove that Brouwer?s Conjecture is true for many families of strongly regular graphs including the conference graphs, the generalized quadrangles GQ(q,q) graphs, the lattice graphs, the Latin square graphs, the strongly regular graphs with smallest eigenvalue −2 (except the triangular graphs) and the primitive strongly regular graphs with at most 30 vertices except for few cases.We leave as an open problem determining the best general lower bound for the minimum size of a disconnecting set of vertices of a strongly regular graph, whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components.     

Indistinguishable Trees and Graphs

We show that a number of graph invariants are, even combined, insufficient to distinguish between non-isomorphic trees or general graphs. Among these are: the spectrum of eigenvalues (equivalently, the characteristic polynomial), the number of independent sets of all sizes or the number of connected subgraphs of all sizes. We therefore extend the classical theorem of Schwenk that almost every tree has a cospectral mate, and we provide an answer to a question of Jamison on average subtree orders of trees. The simple construction that we apply for this purpose is based on finding graphs with two distinguished vertices (called pseudosimilar) that do not belong to the same orbit but whose removal yields isomorphic graphs.     

Forcing highly connected subgraphs

A theorem of Mader states that highly connected subgraphs can be forced in finite graphs by assuming a high minimum degree. We extend this result to infinite graphs. Here, it is necessary to require not only high degree for the vertices but also high vertex‐degree (or multiplicity) for the ends of the graph, that is, a large number of disjoint rays in each end. We give a lower bound on the degree of vertices and the vertex‐degree of the ends which is quadratic in k, the connectedness of the desired subgraph. In fact, this is not far from best possible: we exhibit a family of graphs with a degree of order 2^k at the vertices and a vertex‐degree of order k log k at the ends which have no k‐connected subgraphs. Furthermore, if in addition to the high degrees at the vertices, we only require high edge‐degree for the ends (which is defined as the maximum number of edge‐disjoint rays in an end), Mader's theorem does not extend to infinite graphs, not even to locally finite ones. We give a counterexample in this respect. But, assuming a lower bound of at least 2k for the edge‐degree at the ends and the degree at the vertices does suffice to ensure the existence (k + 1)‐edge‐connected subgraphs in arbitrary graphs. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 54: 331–349, 2007     

Heavy fans, cycles and paths in weighted graphs of large connectivity

A set of paths joining a vertex y and a vertex set L is called (y,L)-fan if any two of the paths have only y in common, and its width is the number of paths forming it. In weighted graphs, it is known that the existence of heavy fan is useful to find a heavy cycle containing some specified vertices.In this paper, we show the existence of heavy fans with large width containing some specified vertices in weighted graphs of large connectivity, which is a weighted analogue of Perfect's theorem. Using this, in 3-connected weighted graphs, we can find heavy cycles containing three specified vertices, and also heavy paths joining two specified vertices containing two more specified vertices. These results extend the previous results in 2-connected weighted graphs to 3-connected weighted graphs.     

Disconnecting strongly regular graphs

In this paper, we show that the minimum number of vertices whose removal disconnects a connected strongly regular graph into non-singleton components equals the size of the neighborhood of an edge for many graphs. These include block graphs of Steiner 2-designs, many Latin square graphs and strongly regular graphs whose intersection parameters are at most a quarter of their valency.     

A separator theorem for graphs of bounded genus

Many divide-and-conquer algorithms on graphs are based on finding a small set of vertices or edges whose removal divides the graph roughly in half. Most graphs do not have the necessary small separators, but some useful classes do. One such class is planar graphs: If an n-vertex graph can be drawn on the plane, then it can be bisected by removal of O(sqrt(n)) vertices (R. J. Lipton and R. E. Tarjan, SIAM J. Appl. Math.36 (1979), 177–189). The main result of the paper is that if a graph can be drawn on a surface of genus g, then it can be bisected by removal of O(sqrt(gn)) vertices. This bound is best possible to within a constant factor. An algorithm is given for finding the separator that takes time linear in the number of edges in the graph, given an embedding of the graph in its genus surface. Some extensions and applications of these results are discussed.     

Error graphs and the reconstruction of elements in groups

Packing and covering problems for metric spaces, and graphs in particular, are of essential interest in combinatorics and coding theory. They are formulated in terms of metric balls of vertices. We consider a new problem in graph theory which is also based on the consideration of metric balls of vertices, but which is distinct from the traditional packing and covering problems. This problem is motivated by applications in information transmission when redundancy of messages is not sufficient for their exact reconstruction, and applications in computational biology when one wishes to restore an evolutionary process. It can be defined as the reconstruction, or identification, of an unknown vertex in a given graph from a minimal number of vertices (erroneous or distorted patterns) in a metric ball of a given radius r around the unknown vertex. For this problem it is required to find minimum restrictions for such a reconstruction to be possible and also to find efficient reconstruction algorithms under such minimal restrictions.In this paper we define error graphs and investigate their basic properties. A particular class of error graphs occurs when the vertices of the graph are the elements of a group, and when the path metric is determined by a suitable set of group elements. These are the undirected Cayley graphs. Of particular interest is the transposition Cayley graph on the symmetric group which occurs in connection with the analysis of transpositional mutations in molecular biology [P.A. Pevzner, Computational Molecular Biology: An Algorithmic Approach, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000; D. Sankoff, N. El-Mabrouk, Genome rearrangement, in: T. Jiang, T. Smith, Y. Xu, M.Q. Zhang (Eds.), Current Topics in Computational Molecular Biology, MIT Press, 2002]. We obtain a complete solution of the above problems for the transposition Cayley graph on the symmetric group.     

On betweenness-uniform graphs

The betweenness centrality of a vertex of a graph is the fraction of shortest paths between all pairs of vertices passing through that vertex. In this paper, we study properties and constructions of graphs whose vertices have the same value of betweenness centrality (betweenness-uniform graphs); we show that this property holds for distanceregular graphs (which include strongly regular graphs) and various graphs obtained by graph cloning and local join operation. In addition, we show that, for sufficiently large n, there are superpolynomially many betweenness-uniform graphs on n vertices, and explore the structure of betweenness-uniform graphs having a universal or sub-universal vertex.     

通过增强型萨格勒布指数对图排序

Recently, Furtula et al. proposed a valuable predictive index in the study of the heat of formation in octanes and heptanes, the augmented Zagreb index(AZI index) of a graph G, which is defined as AZI(G) =∑uv∈E(G)( d_u d_v/d_u + d_v-2)~3,where E(G) is the edge set of G, d u and d v are the degrees of the terminal vertices u and v of edge uv, respectively. In this paper, we obtain the first five largest(resp., the first two smallest) AZI indices of connected graphs with n vertices. Moreover, we determine the trees of order n with the first three smallest AZI indices, the unicyclic graphs of order n with the minimum, the second minimum AZI indices, and the bicyclic graphs of order n with the minimum AZI index, respectively.     

On several sorts of connectivity

For a graph G, we can consider the minimum number of vertices (resp. edges) whose deletion disconnects the graph and such that two of the components created by teh removal of the vertices (resp. the edges, satisfy no additional condition (usual connectivities) or must contain: at least one edge (^#connectivities) or at least one cycle (cyclic connectivities). Thus, we can define six sorts of connectivity for a given graph. In this paper, we give upper bounds for the different types of connectivity and results about the graphs reaching these upper bounds or having connectivity 0 and we investigate relations between these six sorts of connectivity.     

Minimum Self-Repairing Graphs

A graph is self-repairing if it is 2-connected and such that the removal of any single vertex results in no increase in distance between any pair of remaining vertices of the graph. We completely characterize the class of minimum self-repairing graphs, which have the fewest edges for a given number of vertices.     

The (signless) Laplacian spectral radius of unicyclic and bicyclic graphs with <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis> vertices and <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis> pendant vertices

In this paper, the effects on the signless Laplacian spectral radius of a graph are studied when some operations, such as edge moving, edge subdividing, are applied to the graph. Moreover, the largest signless Laplacian spectral radius among the all unicyclic graphs with n vertices and k pendant vertices is identified. Furthermore, we determine the graphs with the largest Laplacian spectral radii among the all unicyclic graphs and bicyclic graphs with n vertices and k pendant vertices, respectively.     

The most vital nodes with respect to independent set and vertex cover

Given an undirected graph with weights on its vertices, the k most vital nodes independent set (k most vital nodes vertex cover) problem consists of determining a set of k vertices whose removal results in the greatest decrease in the maximum weight of independent sets (minimum weight of vertex covers, respectively). We also consider the complementary problems, minimum node blocker independent set (minimum node blocker vertex cover) that consists of removing a subset of vertices of minimum size such that the maximum weight of independent sets (minimum weight of vertex covers, respectively) in the remaining graph is at most a specified value. We show that these problems are NP-hard on bipartite graphs but polynomial-time solvable on unweighted bipartite graphs. Furthermore, these problems are polynomial also on cographs and graphs of bounded treewidth. Results on the non-existence of ptas are presented, too.     

3‐Factor‐Criticality of Vertex‐Transitive Graphs

A graph of order n is p ‐factor‐critical, where p is an integer of the same parity as n, if the removal of any set of p vertices results in a graph with a perfect matching. 1‐factor‐critical graphs and 2‐factor‐critical graphs are factor‐critical graphs and bicritical graphs, respectively. It is well known that every connected vertex‐transitive graph of odd order is factor‐critical and every connected nonbipartite vertex‐transitive graph of even order is bicritical. In this article, we show that a simple connected vertex‐transitive graph of odd order at least five is 3‐factor‐critical if and only if it is not a cycle.