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.