Perfect matchings in balanced hypergraphs

We generalize Hall's condition for the existence of a perfect matching in a bipartite graph, to balanced hypergraphs.This work was partially supported in part by NSF grants DMI-9424348, DMS-9509581 and ONR grant N00014-89-J-1063. Ajai Kapoor was also supported by a grant from Gruppo Nazionale Delle Riccerche-CNR. Finally, we acknowledge the support of Laboratiore ARTEMIS, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble.     

Recognizing Berge Graphs

A graph is Berge if no induced subgraph of G is an odd cycle of length at least five or the complement of one. In this paper we give an algorithm to test if a graph G is Berge, with running time O(|V (G)|⁹). This is independent of the recent proof of the strong perfect graph conjecture.* Currently this author is a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow.** Supported by NSF grant DMI-0352885 and ONR grant N00014-97-1-0196. Supported by ONR grant N00014-01-1-0608, and NSF grant DMS-0070912. Supported by EPSRC grant GR/R35629/01.     

A topological approach to evasiveness

The complexity of a digraph property is the number of entries of the vertex adjacency matrix of a digraph which must be examined in worst case to determine whether the graph has the property. Rivest and Vuillemin proved the result (conjectured by Aanderaa and Rosenberg) that every graph property that is monotone (preserved by addition of edges) and nontrivial (holds for some but not all graphs) has complexity Ω(v ²) wherev is the number of vertices. Karp conjectured that every such property is evasive, i.e., requires that every entry of the incidence matrix be examined. In this paper the truth of Karp’s conjecture is shown to follow from another conjecture concerning group actions on topological spaces. A special case of the conjecture is proved which is applied to prove Karp’s conjecture for the case of properties of graphs on a prime power number of vertices. Supported in part by an NSF postdoctoral fellowship Supported in part by NSF under grant No. MCS-8102248     

Linear Versus Hereditary Discrepancy*

Lovász, Spencer and Vesztergombi proved that the linear discrepancy of a hypergraph H is bounded above by the hereditary discrepancy of H, and conjectured a sharper bound that involves the number of vertices in H. In this paper we give a short proof of this conjecture for hypergraphs of hereditary discrepancy 1. For hypergraphs of higher hereditary discrepancy we give some partial results and propose a sharpening of the conjecture.* A proof of the conjecture of Lovász, Spencer and Vesztergombi for hypergraphs of hereditary discrepancy 1 has also been independently obtained by B. Doerr [6]. Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0100400. Research supported by the Technion V. P. R. Fund–M. and M. L. Bank Mathematics Research Fund and by the Fund for the Promotion of Research at the Technion.     

Bounds on the chromatic polynomial and on the number of acyclic orientations of a graph

An upper bound is given on the number of acyclic orientations of a graph, in terms of the spectrum of its Laplacian. It is shown that this improves upon the previously known bound, which depended on the degree sequence of the graph. Estimates on the new bound are provided.A lower bound on the number of acyclic orientations of a graph is given, with the help of the probabilistic method. This argument can take advantage of structural properties of the graph: it is shown how to obtain stronger bounds for small-degree graphs of girth at least five, than are possible for arbitrary graphs. A simpler proof of the known lower bound for arbitrary graphs is also obtained.Both the upper and lower bounds are shown to extend to the general problem of bounding the chromatic polynomial from above and below along the negative real axis.Partially supported by the NSF under grant CCR-9404113. Most of this research was done while the author was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under Contracts N00014-92-J-1799 and N00014-91-J-1698, the Air Force under Contract F49620-92-J-0125, and the Army under Contract DAAL-03-86-K-0171.Supported by an ONR graduate fellowship, grants NSF 8912586 CCR and AFOSR 89-0271, and an NSF postdoctoral fellowship.     

An approximate Dirac-type theorem for k-uniform hypergraphs

A k-uniform hypergraph is hamiltonian if for some cyclic ordering of its vertex set, every k consecutive vertices form an edge. In 1952 Dirac proved that if the minimum degree in an n-vertex graph is at least n/2 then the graph is hamiltonian. We prove an approximate version of an analogous result for uniform hypergraphs: For every K ≥ 3 and γ > 0, and for all n large enough, a sufficient condition for an n-vertex k-uniform hypergraph to be hamiltonian is that each (k − 1)-element set of vertices is contained in at least (1/2 + γ)n edges. Research supported by NSF grant DMS-0300529. Research supported by KBN grant 2P03A 015 23 and N201036 32/2546. Part of research performed at Emory University, Atlanta. Research supported by NSF grant DMS-0100784.     

Subnormality and 2-hyponormality for Toeplitz operators

In this article we provide an example of a Toeplitz operator which is 2-hyponormal but not subnormal, and we consider 2-hyponormal Toeplitz operators with finite rank self-commutators.Supported by NSF research grant DMS-9800931.Supported by KOSEF research project No. R01-2000-00003.     

Every arrangement extends to a spread

Supported in part by NSA grant MDA904-89-H-2038, PSC-CUNY grant 662330, and the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center under NSF grant STC88-09648.     

How Many Ways Can One Draw A Graph?

Using results from extremal graph theory, we determine the asymptotic number of string graphs with n vertices, i.e., graphs that can be obtained as the intersection graph of a system of continuous arcs in the plane. The number becomes much smaller, for any fixed d, if we restrict our attention to systems of arcs, any two of which cross at most d times. As an application, we estimate the number of different drawings of the complete graph K_n with n vertices under various side conditions. Dedicated to Miklós Simonovits on his sixtieth birthday * Supported by NSF grant CR-00-98246, PSC-CUNY Research Award 62450-0031 and OTKA-T-032452. † Supported by OTKA-T-032452 and OTKA-T-038397.     

Quasi-planar graphs have a linear number of edges

A graph is calledquasi-planar if it can be drawn in the plane so that no three of its edges are pairwise crossing. It is shown that the maximum number of edges of a quasi-planar graph withn vertices isO(n).Work on this paper by Pankaj K. Agarwal, Boris Aronov and Micha Sharir has been supported by a grant from the U.S.-Israeli Binational Science Foundation. Work on this paper by Pankaj K. Agarwal has also been supported by NSF Grant CCR-93-01259, by an Army Research Office MURI grant DAAH04-96-1-0013, by an NYI award, and by matching funds from Xerox Corporation. Work on this paper by Boris Aronov has also been supported by NSF Grant CCR-92-11541 and by a Sloan Research Fellowship. Work on this paper by János Pach, Richard Pollack, and Micha Sharir has been supported by NSF Grants CCR-91-22103 and CCR-94-24398. Work by János Pach was also supported by Grant OTKA-4269 and by a CUNY Research Award. Work by Richard Pollack was also supported by NSF Grants CCR-94-02640 and DMS-94-00293. Work by Micha Sharir was also supported by NSF Grant CCR-93-11127, by a Max-Planck Research Award, and by grants from the Israel Science Fund administered by the Israeli Academy of Sciences, and the G.I.F., the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development. Part of the work on this paper was done during the participation of the first four authors in the Special Semester on Computational and Combinatorial Geometry organized by the Mathematical Research Institute of Tel Aviv University, Spring 1995.     

On Bipartite Graphs with Linear Ramsey Numbers

Dedicated to the memory of Paul Erdős We provide an elementary proof of the fact that the ramsey number of every bipartite graph H with maximum degree at most is less than . This improves an old upper bound on the ramsey number of the n-cube due to Beck, and brings us closer toward the bound conjectured by Burr and Erdős. Applying the probabilistic method we also show that for all and there exists a bipartite graph with n vertices and maximum degree at most whose ramsey number is greater than for some absolute constant c>1. Received December 1, 1999 RID="*" ID="*" Supported by NSF grant DMS-9704114 RID="**" ID="**" Supported by KBN grant 2 P03A 032 16     

Graphs drawn with few crossings per edge

We show that if a graph ofv vertices can be drawn in the plane so that every edge crosses at mostk>0 others, then its number of edges cannot exceed 4.108kv. Fork4, we establish a better bound, (k+3)(v–2), which is tight fork=1 and 2. We apply these estimates to improve a result of Ajtai et al. and Leighton, providing a general lower bound for the crossing number of a graph in terms of its number of vertices and edges.Supported by NSF grant CCR-94-24398 and PSC-CUNY Research Award 667339.Supported by OTKA-T-020914, OTKA-F-22234 and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Postdoctoral Fellowship Award.     

Vertex Covers by Edge Disjoint Cliques

Dedicated to the memory of Paul Erdős Let H be a simple graph having no isolated vertices. An (H,k)-vertex-cover of a simple graph G = (V,E) is a collection of subgraphs of G satisfying 1.  , for all i = 1, ..., r, 2.  , 3.  , for all , and 4.  each is in at most k of the . We consider the existence of such vertex covers when H is a complete graph, , in the context of extremal and random graphs. Received October 31, 1999 RID="*" ID="*" Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9627408. RID="†" ID="†" Supported in part by NSF grant CCR-9530974. RID="‡" ID="‡" Supported in part by OTKA Grants T 030059 and T 29074, FKFP 0607/1999 and by the Bolyai Foundation. RID="§" ID="§" Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9970622.     

The asymptotic number of acyclic digraphs. I

We obtain an asymptotic formula forA _n,q , the number of digraphs withn labeled vertices,q edges and no cycles. The derivation consists of two separate parts. In the first we analyze the generating function forA _n,q so as to obtain a central limit theorem for an associated probability distribution. In the second part we show combinatorially thatA _n,q is a smooth function ofq. By combining these results, we obtain the desired asymptotic formula. Research supported by NSF under grant MCS-8300414. Research supported by NSERC under grant A4067. Research supported by NSF under grant MCS-8302282. Research supported by the Australian Department of Science and Technology under the Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship Scheme, while this author was at the University of Newcastle, Australia.     

A parallel method for fast and practical high-order newton interpolation

We present parallel algorithms for the computation and evaluation of interpolating polynomials. The algorithms use parallel prefix techniques for the calculation of divided differences in the Newton representation of the interpolating polynomial. Forn+1 given input pairs, the proposed interpolation algorithm requires only 2 [log(n+1)]+2 parallel arithmetic steps and circuit sizeO(n ²), reducing the best known circuit size for parallel interpolation by a factor of logn. The algorithm for the computation of the divided differences is shown to be numerically stable and does not require equidistant points, precomputation, or the fast Fourier transform. We report on numerical experiments comparing this with other serial and parallel algorithms. The experiments indicate that the method can be very useful for very high-order interpolation, which is made possible for special sets of interpolation nodes.Supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF DCR-8603722.Supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. US NSF MIP-8410110, US NSF DCR85-09970, and US NSF CCR-8717942 and AT&T under Grant AT&T AFFL67Sameh.     

A random 1-011-011-01algorithm for depth first search

In this paper we present a fast parallel algorithm for constructing a depth first search tree for an undirected graph. The algorithm is anRNC algorithm, meaning that it is a probabilistic algorithm that runs in polylog time using a polynomial number of processors on aP-RAM. The run time of the algorithm isO(T _MM(n) log³ n), and the number of processors used isP _MM (n) whereT _MM(n) andP _MM(n) are the time and number of processors needed to find a minimum weight perfect matching on ann vertex graph with maximum edge weightn.This research was done while the first author was visiting the Mathematical Research Institute in Berkeley. Research supported in part by NSF grant 8120790.Supported by Air Force Grant AFOSR-85-0203A.     

An optimal lower bound on the number of variables for graph identification

In this paper we show that (n) variables are needed for first-order logic with counting to identify graphs onn vertices. Thek-variable language with counting is equivalent to the (k–1)-dimensional Weisfeiler-Lehman method. We thus settle a long-standing open problem. Previously it was an open question whether or not 4 variables suffice. Our lower bound remains true over a set of graphs of color class size 4. This contrasts sharply with the fact that 3 variables suffice to identify all graphs of color class size 3, and 2 variables suffice to identify almost all graphs. Our lower bound is optimal up to multiplication by a constant becausen variables obviously suffice to identify graphs onn vertices.Research supported by NSF grant CCR-8709818.Research supported by NSF grant CCR-8805978 and Pennsylvania State University Research Initiation grant 428-45.Research supported by NSF grants DCR-8603346 and CCR-8806308.     

Some minimax principles and their applications in nonlinear elliptic equations

Sans résumé Supported in part by NSF grant MCS-77-18723 (02). The results of this paper were obtained while the author was partially supported by U. S. Army Research Office grant No. DAA-29-78-6-0127 at Courant Institute, New York University.     

Threshold functions

It is shown that every non-trivial monotone increasing property of subsets of a set has a threshold function. This generalises a number of classical results in the theory of random graphs. First author supported by NSF grant MCS 8104854     

Packing directed circuits

We prove a conjecture of Younger, that for every integern0 there exists an integert0 such that for every digraphG, eitherG hasn vertex-disjoint directed circuits, orG can be made acyclic by deleting at mostt vertices.Research partially supported by DONET ECHM contract CHRXCT930090.Research partially supported by DIMACS, by NSF grant DMS-9401981 and by ONR grant N00014-92-J-1965, and partially performed under a consulting agreement with Bellcore.Research partially supported by DIMACS, by Université de Paris VI, by NSF grant DMS-9303761 and by ONR grant N00014-93-1-0325, and partially performed under a consulting agreement with Bellcore.