The cover time of random geometric graphs

We study the cover time of random geometric graphs. Let $I(d)=[0,1]^{d}$ denote the unit torus in d dimensions. Let $D(x,r)$ denote the ball (disc) of radius r. Let $\Upsilon_d$ be the volume of the unit ball $D(0,1)$ in d dimensions. A random geometric graph $G=G(d,r,n)$ in d dimensions is defined as follows: Sample n points V independently and uniformly at random from $I(d)$ . For each point x draw a ball $D(x,r)$ of radius r about x. The vertex set $V(G)=V$ and the edge set $E(G)=\{\{v,w\}: w\ne v,\,w\in D(v,r)\}$ . Let $G(d,r,n),\,d\geq 3$ be a random geometric graph. Let $C_G$ denote the cover time of a simple random walk on G. Let $c>1$ be constant, and let $r=(c\log n/(\Upsilon_dn))^{1/d}$ . Then whp the cover time satisfies © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 38, 324–349, 2011     

Ore‐type condition for the existence of connected factors

In this article, we obtain some Ore‐type sufficient conditions for a graph to have a connected factor with degree restrictions. Let α and k be positive integers with if and if . Let G be a connected graph with a spanning subgraph F, each component of which has order at least α. We show that if the degree sum of two nonadjacent vertices is greater than then G has a connected subgraph in which F is contained and every vertex has degree at most . From the result, we derive that a graph G has a connected ‐factor if the degree sum of two nonadjacent vertices is at least . © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Graph Theory 56: 241–248, 2007     

Circular chromatic index of Cartesian products of graphs

The circular chromatic index of a graph G, written , is the minimum r permitting a function such that whenever e and are incident. Let □ , where □ denotes Cartesian product and H is an ‐regular graph of odd order, with (thus, G is s‐regular). We prove that , where is the minimum, over all bases of the cycle space of H, of the maximum length of a cycle in the basis. When and m is large, the lower bound is sharp. In particular, if , then □ , independent of m. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 7–18, 2008     

Disjoint cycles with chords in graphs

Let be integers, , , and let for each , be a cycle or a tree on vertices. We prove that every graph G of order at least n with contains k vertex disjoint subgraphs , where , if is a tree, and is a cycle with chords incident with a common vertex, if is a cycle. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 60: 87–98, 2009     

Vertex suppression in 3‐connected graphs

To suppress a vertex in a finite graph G means to delete it and add an edge from a to b if a, b are distinct nonadjacent vertices which formed the neighborhood of . Let be the graph obtained from by suppressing vertices of degree at most 2 as long as it is possible; this is proven to be well defined. Our main result states that every 3‐connected graph G has a vertex x such that is 3‐connected unless G is isomorphic to , , or to a wheel for some . This leads to a generator theorem for 3‐connected graphs in terms of series parallel extensions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 41–54, 2008     

Graph classes characterized both by forbidden subgraphs and degree sequences

Given a set of graphs, a graph G is ‐free if G does not contain any member of as an induced subgraph. We say that is a degree‐sequence‐forcing set if, for each graph G in the class of ‐free graphs, every realization of the degree sequence of G is also in . We give a complete characterization of the degree‐sequence‐forcing sets when has cardinality at most two. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 131–148, 2008     

Maximum number of colorings of (2k,k2)‐graphs

Let consist of all simple graphs on 2k vertices and edges. For a simple graph G and a positive integer , let denote the number of proper vertex colorings of G in at most colors, and let . We prove that and is the only extremal graph. We also prove that as . © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 56: 135–148, 2007     

On conjectures of Frankl and El‐Zahar

An induced subgraph of a graph is called a derived subgraph of if contains no isolated vertices. An edge e of is said to be residual if e occurs in more than half of the derived subgraphs of . In this article, we prove that every simple graph with at least one edge contains a non‐residual edge. This was conjectured by El‐Zahar in 1997. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 344–352, 2008     

Cutting two graphs simultaneously

Consider two graphs, and , on the same vertex set V, with and having edges for . We give a simple algorithm that partitions V into sets A and B such that and . We also show, using a probabilistic method, that if and belong to certain classes of graphs, (for instance, if and both have a density of at least 2/, or if and are both regular of degree at most with n sufficiently large) then we can find a partition of V into sets A and B such that for . © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 19–32, 2008     

On k‐detour subgraphs of hypercubes

A spanning subgraph G of a graph H is a k‐detour subgraph of H if for each pair of vertices , the distance, , between x and y in G exceeds that in H by at most k. Such subgraphs sometimes also are called additive spanners. In this article, we study k‐detour subgraphs of the n‐dimensional cube, , with few edges or with moderate maximum degree. Let denote the minimum possible maximum degree of a k‐detour subgraph of . The main result is that for every and On the other hand, for each fixed even and large n, there exists a k‐detour subgraph of with average degree at most . © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 55–64, 2008     

A S(3, {4, 6}, 18) with a subdesign S(3, 4, 8) does not exist

For , a S(t,K,v) design is a pair, , with |V| = v and a set of subsets of V such that each t‐subset of V is contained in a unique and for all . If , , , and is a S(t,K,u) design, then we say has a subdesign on U. We show that a S(3,{4,6},18) design with a subdesign S(3,4,8) does not exist. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 17: 36–38, 2009     

Uniqueness of weak solutions in critical space of the 3‐D time‐dependent Ginzburg‐Landau equations for superconductivity

We prove the uniqueness of weak solutions of the 3‐D time‐dependent Ginzburg‐Landau equations for super‐conductivity with initial data (ψ₀, A₀)∈ L² under the hypothesis that (ψ, A) ∈ L^s(0, T; L^r,∞) × (0, T; with Coulomb gauge for any (r, s) and satisfying + = 1, + = 1, ≥ , ≥ and 3 < r ≤ 6, 3 < ≤ ∞. Here L^r,∞ ≡ is the Lorentz space. As an application, we prove a uniqueness result with periodic boundary condition when ψ₀ ∈ , A₀ ∈ L³ (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Tangency sets in PG(3, q)

A tangency set of PG (d,q) is a set Q of points with the property that every point P of Q lies on a hyperplane that meets Q only in P. It is known that a tangency set of PG (3,q) has at most points with equality only if it is an ovoid. We show that a tangency set of PG (3,q) with , or points is contained in an ovoid. This implies the non‐existence of minimal blocking sets of size , , and of with respect to planes in PG (3,q), and implies the extendability of partial 1‐systems of size , , or to 1‐systems on the hyperbolic quadric . © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 16: 462–476, 2008     

Random mappings with exchangeable in‐degrees

In this article we introduce a new random mapping model, , which maps the set {1,2,…,n} into itself. The random mapping is constructed using a collection of exchangeable random variables which satisfy . In the random digraph, , which represents the mapping , the in‐degree sequence for the vertices is given by the variables , and, in some sense, can be viewed as an analogue of the general independent degree models from random graph theory. We show that the distribution of the number of cyclic points, the number of components, and the size of a typical component can be expressed in terms of expectations of various functions of . We also consider two special examples of which correspond to random mappings with preferential and anti‐preferential attachment, respectively, and determine, for these examples, exact and asymptotic distributions for the statistics mentioned above. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2008     

On the oriented chromatic index of oriented graphs

A homomorphism from an oriented graph G to an oriented graph H is a mapping from the set of vertices of G to the set of vertices of H such that is an arc in H whenever is an arc in G. The oriented chromatic index of an oriented graph G is the minimum number of vertices in an oriented graph H such that there exists a homomorphism from the line digraph LD(G) of G to H (the line digraph LD(G) of G is given by V(LD(G)) = A(G) and whenever and ). We give upper bounds for the oriented chromatic index of graphs with bounded acyclic chromatic number, of planar graphs and of graphs with bounded degree. We also consider lower and upper bounds of oriented chromatic number in terms of oriented chromatic index. We finally prove that the problem of deciding whether an oriented graph has oriented chromatic index at most k is polynomial time solvable if k ≤ 3 and is NP‐complete if k ≥ 4. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 313–332, 2008     

Hitting all maximum cliques with a stable set using lopsided independent transversals

Rabern recently proved that any graph with contains a stable set meeting all maximum cliques. We strengthen this result, proving that such a stable set exists for any graph with . This is tight, i.e. the inequality in the statement must be strict. The proof relies on finding an independent transversal in a graph partitioned into vertex sets of unequal size. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 67:300‐305, 2011     

A better bound for the cop number of general graphs

In this note, we prove that the cop number of any n‐vertex graph G, denoted by , is at most . Meyniel conjectured . It appears that the best previously known sublinear upper‐bound is due to Frankl, who proved . © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 58: 45–48, 2008     

Homomorphism bounds for oriented planar graphs

If is a class of oriented graphs (directed graphs without opposite arcs), then an oriented graph is a homomorphism bound for if there is a homomorphism from each graph in to H. We find some necessary conditions for a graph to be a homomorphism bound for the class of oriented planar graphs and prove that such a graph must have maximum degree at least 16; thus there exists an oriented planar graph with oriented chromatic number at least 17. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 55: 175–190, 2007     

Improved inapproximability results for counting independent sets in the hard‐core model

We study the computational complexity of approximately counting the number of independent sets of a graph with maximum degree Δ. More generally, for an input graph and an activity , we are interested in the quantity defined as the sum over independent sets I weighted as . In statistical physics, is the partition function for the hard‐core model, which is an idealized model of a gas where the particles have non‐negligible size. Recently, an interesting phase transition was shown to occur for the complexity of approximating the partition function. Weitz showed an FPAS for the partition function for any graph of maximum degree Δ when Δ is constant and . The quantity is the critical point for the so‐called uniqueness threshold on the infinite, regular tree of degree Δ. On the other side, Sly proved that there does not exist efficient (randomized) approximation algorithms for , unless , for some function . We remove the upper bound in the assumptions of Sly's result for , that is, we show that there does not exist efficient randomized approximation algorithms for all for and . Sly's inapproximability result uses a clever reduction, combined with a second‐moment analysis of Mossel, Weitz and Wormald which prove torpid mixing of the Glauber dynamics for sampling from the associated Gibbs distribution on almost every regular graph of degree Δ for the same range of λ as in Sly's result. We extend Sly's result by improving upon the technical work of Mossel et al., via a more detailed analysis of independent sets in random regular graphs. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 45, 78–110, 2014