On graphs whose Laplacian matrices have distinct integer eigenvalues

In this paper, we investigate graphs for which the corresponding Laplacian matrix has distinct integer eigenvalues. We define the set S_i,n to be the set of all integers from 0 to n, excluding i. If there exists a graph whose Laplacian matrix has this set as its eigenvalues, we say that this set is Laplacian realizable. We investigate the sets S_i,n that are Laplacian realizable, and the structures of the graphs whose Laplacian matrix has such a set as its eigenvalues. We characterize those i < n such that S_i,n is Laplacian realizable, and show that for certain values of i, the set S_i,n is realized by a unique graph. Finally, we conjecture that S_n,n is not Laplacian realizable for n ≥ 2 and show that the conjecture holds for certain values of n. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory     

The spanning trees forced by the path and the star

A set S of trees of order n forces a tree T if every graph having each tree in S as a spanning tree must also have T as a spanning tree. A spanning tree forcing set for order n that forces every tree of order n. A spanning-tree forcing set S is a test set for panarboreal graphs, since a graph of order n is panarboreal if and only if it has all of the trees in S as spanning trees. For each positive integer n ≠ 1, the star belongs to every spanning tree forcing set for order n. The main results of this paper are a proof that the path belongs to every spanning-tree forcing set for each order n ∉ {1, 6, 7, 8} and a computationally tractable characterization of the trees of order n ≥ 15 forced by the path and the star. Corollaries of those results include a construction of many trees that do not belong to any minimal spanning tree forcing set for orders n ≥ 15 and a proof that the following related decision problem is NP-complete: an instance is a pair (G, T) consisting of a graph G of order n and maximum degree n - 1 with a hamiltonian path, and a tree T of order n; the problem is to determine whether T is a spanning tree of G. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Numerical enclosure for multiple eigenvalues of an Hermitian matrix whose graph is a tree

In this paper we consider a numerical enclosure method for multiple eigenvalues of an Hermitian matrix whose graph is a tree. If an Hermitian matrix A whose graph is a tree has multiple eigenvalues, it has the property that matrices which are associated with some branches in the undirected graph of A have the same eigenvalues. By using this property and interlacing inequalities for Hermitian matrices, we show an enclosure method for multiple eigenvalues of an Hermitian matrix whose graph is a tree. Since we do not generally know whether a given matrix has exactly a multiple eigenvalue from approximate computations, we use the property of interlacing inequalities to enclose some eigenvalues including multiplicities.In this process, we only use the enclosure of simple eigenvalues to enclose a multiple eigenvalue by using a computer and interval arithmetic.     

On the measure of scrambled sets of tree maps with zero topological entropy

In this paper, we show that if f is a tree map of zero topological entropy and μ is an f-invariant Borel measure then any scrambled set S has zero outer μ-measure (hence μ-measurable). In particular, if S is measurable, it has zero μ-measure.     

Geodesics in large planar maps and in the Brownian map

We study geodesics in the random metric space called the Brownian map, which appears as the scaling limit of large planar maps. In particular, we completely describe geodesics starting from the distinguished point called the root, and we characterize the set S of all points that are connected to the root by more than one geodesic. The set S is dense in the Brownian map and homeomorphic to a non-compact real tree. Furthermore, for every x in S, the number of distinct geodesics from x to the root is equal to the number of connected components of S\{x}. In particular, points of the Brownian map can be connected to the root by at most three distinct geodesics. Our results have applications to the behavior of geodesics in large planar maps.     

Recursive functions on conditional Galton‐Watson trees

A recursive function on a tree is a function in which each leaf has a given value, and each internal node has a value equal to a function of the number of children, the values of the children, and possibly an explicitly specified random element U. The value of the root is the key quantity of interest in general. In this study, all node values and function values are in a finite set S. In this note, we describe the limit behavior when the leaf values are drawn independently from a fixed distribution on S, and the tree T_n is a random Galton‐Watson tree of size n.     

Spectral theory of minimax estimation

The set ofS ₁-estimates of solutions of systems of linear equations with random parameters is found. It is proved that the maximal eigenvalue in the goodness criterion is not simple. For the purpose of finding estimates from theS ₁ set, the perturbation formulas for eigenvalues and formulas for distribution density of random matrices are used.     

Approximation algorithms for constrained generalized tree alignment problem

In generalized tree alignment problem, we are given a set S of k biologically related sequences and we are interested in a minimum cost evolutionary tree for S. In many instances of this problem partial phylogenetic tree for S is known. In such instances, we would like to make use of this knowledge to restrict the tree topologies that we consider and construct a biologically relevant minimum cost evolutionary tree. So, we propose the following natural generalization of the generalized tree alignment problem, a problem known to be MAX-SNP Hard, stated as follows:

Constrained Generalized Tree Alignment Problem [S. Divakaran, Algorithms and heuristics for constrained generalized alignment problem, DIMACS Technical Report 2007-21, 2007]: Given a set S of k related sequences and a phylogenetic forest comprising of node-disjoint phylogenetic trees that specify the topological constraints that an evolutionary tree of S needs to satisfy, construct a minimum cost evolutionary tree for S.

In this paper, we present constant approximation algorithms for the constrained generalized tree alignment problem. For the generalized tree alignment problem, a special case of this problem, our algorithms provide a guaranteed error bound of 2−2/k.     

Improved heuristics for the minimum weight triangulation problem

Given a planar point setS, a triangulation ofS is a maximal set of non-intersecting line segments connecting the points. The minimum weight triangulation problem is to find a triangulation ofS such that the sum of the lengths of the line segments in it is the smallest. No polynomial time algorithm is known to produce the optimal or even a constant approximation of the optimal solution, and it is also unknown whether the problem is NP-hard. In this paper, we propose two improved heuristics, which triangulate a set ofn points in a plane inO(n ³) time and never do worse than the minimum spanning tree triangulation algorithm given by Lingas and the greedy spanning tree triangulation algorithm given by Heath and Pemmaraju. These two algorithms both produce an optimal triangulation if the points are the vertices of a convex polygon, and also do the same in some special cases.     

On edge star sets in trees

Let A be a Hermitian matrix whose graph is G (i.e. there is an edge between the vertices i and j in G if and only if the (i,j) entry of A is non-zero). Let λ be an eigenvalue of A with multiplicity m_A(λ). An edge e=ij is said to be Parter (resp., neutral, downer) for λ,A if m_A(λ)−m_A−e(λ) is negative (resp., 0, positive ), where A−e is the matrix resulting from making the (i,j) and (j,i) entries of A zero. For a tree T with adjacency matrix A a subset S of the edge set of G is called an edge star set for an eigenvalue λ of A, if |S|=m_A(λ) and A−S has no eigenvalue λ. In this paper the existence of downer edges and edge star sets for non-zero eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of a tree is proved. We prove that neutral edges always exist for eigenvalues of multiplicity more than 1. It is also proved that an edge e=uv is a downer edge for λ,A if and only if u and v are both downer vertices for λ,A; and e=uv is a neutral edge if u and v are neutral vertices. Among other results, it is shown that any edge star set for each eigenvalue of a tree is a matching.     

Optimizing Phylogenetic Diversity with Ecological Constraints

Given an edge-weighted tree T{\mathcal {T}} with leaf set X, define the weight of a subset S of X as the sum of the edge-weights of the minimal subtree of T{\mathcal {T}} connecting the elements in S. It is known that the problem of selecting subsets of X of a given size to maximize this weight can be solved using a greedy algorithm. This optimization problem arises in conservation biology where the weight is referred to as the phylogenetic diversity of a taxa set S. Here, we consider the extension of this problem whereby we are only interested in selecting subsets of the taxa set that are ecologically “viable”. Such subsets are specified by an acyclic digraph which represents, for example, a food web. This additional constraint makes the problem computationally hard. In this paper, we analyze the complexity of different variations of the extended problem.     

The disjunctive domination number of a graph

Abstract

For a positive integer b, we define a set S of vertices in a graph G as a b-disjunctive dominating set if every vertex not in S is adjacent to a vertex of S or has at least b vertices in S at distance 2 from it. The b-disjunctive domination number is the minimum cardinality of such a set. This concept is motivated by the concepts of distance domination and exponential domination. In this paper, we start with some simple results, then establish bounds on the parameter especially for regular graphs and claw-free graphs. We also show that determining the parameter is NP-complete, and provide a linear-time algorithm for trees.     

The idempotent-separating degree of a block-group

In this note we characterize the least positive integer n such that there exists an idempotent-separating homomorphism from a finite block-group S into the monoid of all partial transformations of a set with n elements. In particular, as for a fundamental semigroup S this number coincides with the smallest size of a set for which S can be faithfully represented by partial transformations, we obtain a generalization of Easdown’s result established for fundamental finite inverse semigroups. The author gratefully acknowledges support of FCT and FEDER, within the project POCTI-ISFL-1-143 of CAUL, and the fellowship SFRH/BSAB/244/2001.     

Trees with Equal Domination and Restrained Domination Numbers

Let G = (V,E) be a graph and let S V. The set S is a packing in G if the vertices of S are pairwise at distance at least three apart in G. The set S is a dominating set (DS) if every vertex in V − S is adjacent to a vertex in S. Further, if every vertex in V − S is also adjacent to a vertex in V − S, then S is a restrained dominating set (RDS). The domination number of G, denoted by γ(G), is the minimum cardinality of a DS of G, while the restrained domination number of G, denoted by γ_r(G), is the minimum cardinality of a RDS of G. The graph G is γ-excellent if every vertex of G belongs to some minimum DS of G. A constructive characterization of trees with equal domination and restrained domination numbers is presented. As a consequence of this characterization we show that the following statements are equivalent: (i) T is a tree with γ(T)=γ_r(T); (ii) T is a γ-excellent tree and T ≠ K₂; and (iii) T is a tree that has a unique maximum packing and this set is a dominating set of T. We show that if T is a tree of order n with ℓ leaves, then γ_r(T) ≤ (n + ℓ + 1)/2, and we characterize those trees achieving equality.     

Bayes estimation of number of signals

Bayes estimation of the number of signals, q, based on a binomial prior distribution is studied. It is found that the Bayes estimate depends on the eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix S for white-noise case and the eigenvalues of the matrix S ₂ (S ₁+A)^–1 for the colored-noise case, where S ₁ is the sample covariance matrix of observations consisting only noise, S ₂ the sample covariance matrix of observations consisting both noise and signals and A is some positive definite matrix. Posterior distributions for both the cases are derived by expanding zonal polynomial in terms of monomial symmetric functions and using some of the important formulae of James (1964, Ann. Math. Statist., 35, 475–501).     

The preconditioned inverse iteration for hierarchical matrices

The preconditioned inverse iteration is an efficient method to compute the smallest eigenpair of a symmetric positive definite matrix M. Here we use this method to find the smallest eigenvalues of a hierarchical matrix. The storage complexity of the data‐sparse ‐matrices is almost linear. We use ‐arithmetic to precondition with an approximate inverse of M or an approximate Cholesky decomposition of M. In general, ‐arithmetic is of linear‐polylogarithmic complexity, so the computation of one eigenvalue is cheap. We extend the ideas to the computation of inner eigenvalues by computing an invariant subspace S of (M ? μI)² by subspace preconditioned inverse iteration. The eigenvalues of the generalized matrix Rayleigh quotient μ_M(S) are the desired inner eigenvalues of M. The idea of using (M ? μI)² instead of M is known as the folded spectrum method. As we rely on the positive definiteness of the shifted matrix, we cannot simply apply shifted inverse iteration therefor. Numerical results substantiate the convergence properties and show that the computation of the eigenvalues is superior to existing algorithms for non‐sparse matrices.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positive definite quadratic forms representing integers of the form <Emphasis Type="Italic">an</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript>+<Emphasis Type="Italic">b</Emphasis>

For any subset S of positive integers, a positive definite integral quadratic form is said to be S-universal if it represents every integer in the set S. In this article, we classify all binary S-universal positive definite integral quadratic forms in the case when S=S _a ={an ²∣n≥2} or S=S _a,b ={an ²+b∣n∈ℤ}, where a is a positive integer and ab is a square-free positive integer in the latter case. We also prove that there are only finitely many S _a -universal ternary quadratic forms not representing a. Finally, we show that there are exactly 15 ternary diagonal S ₁-universal quadratic forms not representing 1.     

The Steiner ratio conjecture for cocircular points

A Steiner minimal treeS is a network of shortest possible length connecting a set ofn points in the plane. LetT be a shortest tree connecting then points but with vertices only at these points.T is called a minimal spanning tree. The Steiner ratio conjecture is that the length ofS divided by the length ofT is at least 3/2. In this paper we use a variational approach to show that if then points lie on a circle, then the Steiner ratio conjecture holds.     

Packing Steiner trees: polyhedral investigations

LetG=(V, E) be a graph andT⊆V be a node set. We call an edge setS a Steiner tree forT ifS connects all pairs of nodes inT. In this paper we address the following problem, which we call the weighted Steiner tree packing problem. Given a graphG=(V, E) with edge weightsw _e , edge capacitiesc _e ,e∈E, and node setT ₁,…,T _N , find edge setsS ₁,…,S _N such that eachS _k is a Steiner tree forT _k , at mostc _e of these edge sets use edgee for eache∈E, and the sum of the weights of the edge sets is minimal. Our motivation for studying this problem arises from a routing problem in VLSI-design, where given sets of points have to be connected by wires. We consider the Steiner tree packing problem from a polyhedral point of view and define an associated polyhedron, called the Steiner tree packing polyhedron. The goal of this paper is to (partially) describe this polyhedron by means of inequalities. It turns out that, under mild assumptions, each inequality that defines a facet for the (single) Steiner tree polyhedron can be lifted to a facet-defining inequality for the Steiner tree packing polyhedron. The main emphasis of this paper lies on the presentation of so-called joint inequalities that are valid and facet-defining for this polyhedron. Inequalities of this kind involve at least two Steiner trees. The classes of inequalities we have found form the basis of a branch & cut algorithm. This algorithm is described in our companion paper (in this issue).     

Upward straight-line embeddings of directed graphs into point sets

In this paper we study the problem of computing an upward straight-line embedding of a planar DAG (directed acyclic graph) G into a point set S, i.e. a planar drawing of G such that each vertex is mapped to a point of S, each edge is drawn as a straight-line segment, and all the edges are oriented according to a common direction. In particular, we show that no biconnected DAG admits an upward straight-line embedding into every point set in convex position. We provide a characterization of the family of DAGs that admit an upward straight-line embedding into every convex point set such that the points with the largest and the smallest y-coordinate are consecutive in the convex hull of the point set. We characterize the family of DAGs that contain a Hamiltonian directed path and that admit an upward straight-line embedding into every point set in general position. We also prove that a DAG whose underlying graph is a tree does not always have an upward straight-line embedding into a point set in convex position and we describe how to construct such an embedding for a DAG whose underlying graph is a path. Finally, we give results about the embeddability of some sub-classes of DAGs whose underlying graphs are trees on point set in convex and in general position.