Some topological properties of star graphs: The surface area and volume

The star graph, as an interesting network topology, has been extensively studied in the past. In this paper, we address some of the combinatorial properties of the star graph. In particular, we consider the problem of calculating the surface area and volume of the star graph, and thus answering an open problem previously posed in the literature. The surface area of a sphere with radius i in a graph is the number of nodes in the graph whose distance from a given node is exactly i. The volume of a sphere with radius i in a graph is the number of nodes within distance i from the given node. In this paper, we derive explicit expressions to calculate the surface area and volume in the star graph.     

The minimum volume of subspace trades

A subspace bitrade of type $T_q(t,k,v)$ is a pair $(T_0,T_1)$ of two disjoint nonempty collections of $k$-dimensional subspaces of a $v$-dimensional space $V$ over the finite field of order $q$ such that every $t$-dimensional subspace of $V$ is covered by the same number of subspaces from $T_0$ and $T_1$. In a previous paper, the minimum cardinality of a subspace $T_q(t,t+1,v)$ bitrade was established. We generalize that result by showing that for admissible $v$, $t$, and $k$, the minimum cardinality of a subspace $T_q(t,k,v)$ bitrade does not depend on $k$. An example of a minimum bitrade is represented using generator matrices in the reduced echelon form. For $t=1$, the uniqueness of a minimum bitrade is proved.     

Finding optimal volume subintervals with k points and calculating the star discrepancy are NP-hard problems

The well-known star discrepancy is a common measure for the uniformity of point distributions. It is used, e.g., in multivariate integration, pseudo random number generation, experimental design, statistics, or computer graphics.     

List star chromatic index of sparse graphs

A star edge-coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper edge coloring such that every 2-colored connected subgraph of $G$ is a path of length at most 3. For a graph $G$, let the list star chromatic index of $G$, $c{h}_s^{\prime }\left(G\right)$, be the minimum $k$ such that for any $k$-uniform list assignment $L$ for the set of edges, $G$ has a star edge-coloring from $L$. Dvo?ák et al. (2013) asked whether the list star chromatic index of every subcubic graph is at most 7. In Kerdjoudj et al. (2017) we proved that it is at most 8. In this paper we consider graphs with any maximum degree, we proved that if the maximum average degree of a graph $G$ is less than $\frac{14}{5}$ (resp. 3), then $c{h}_s^{\prime }\left(G\right)\le 2\Delta \left(G\right)+2$ (resp. $c{h}_s^{\prime }\left(G\right)\le 2\Delta \left(G\right)+3$).     

Pasch trades with a negative block

A Steiner triple system of order v, STS(v), may be called equivalent to another STS(v) if one can be converted to the other by a sequence of three simple operations involving Pasch trades with a single negative block. It is conjectured that any two STS(v)s on the same base set are equivalent in this sense. We prove that the equivalence class containing a given system S on a base set V contains all the systems that can be obtained from S by any sequence of well over one hundred distinct trades, and that this equivalence class contains all isomorphic copies of S on V. We also show that there are trades which cannot be effected by means of Pasch trades with a single negative block.     

3-Homogeneous latin trades

Let T be a partial latin square and L be a latin square with TL. We say that T is a latin trade if there exists a partial latin square T^′ with T^′∩T= such that (LT)T^′ is a latin square. A k-homogeneous latin trade is one which intersects each row, each column and each entry either 0 or k times. In this paper, we construct 3-homogeneous latin trades from hexagonal packings of the plane with circles. We show that 3-homogeneous latin trades of size 3 m exist for each m3. This paper discusses existence results for latin trades and provides a glueing construction which is subsequently used to construct all latin trades of finite order greater than three.     

Vector subspaces of finite fields and star operations on pseudo-valuation domains

Given an extension of finite fields $F\subseteq L$, we study the number of the equivalence classes of F-vector subspaces of L modulo multiplication by elements of L, obtaining an exact formula and some bounds. We then apply the results obtained to the study of the set of F-star operations on L, which correspond to star operations on a pseudo-valuation domain R.     

Strong structural properties of unidirectional star graphs

Day and Tripathi [K. Day, A. Tripathi, Unidirectional star graphs, Inform. Process. Lett. 45 (1993) 123-129] proposed an assignment of directions on the star graphs and derived attractive properties for the resulting directed graphs: an important one is that they are strongly connected. In [E. Cheng, M.J. Lipman, On the Day-Tripathi orientation of the star graphs: Connectivity, Inform. Process. Lett. 73 (2000) 5-10] it is shown that the Day-Tripathi orientations are in fact maximally arc-connected when n is odd; when n is even, they can be augmented to maximally arc-connected digraphs by adding a minimum set of arcs. This gives strong evidence that the Day-Tripathi orientations are good orientations. In [E. Cheng, M.J. Lipman, Connectivity properties of unidirectional star graphs, Congr. Numer. 150 (2001) 33-42] it is shown that vertex-connectivity is maximal, and that if we delete as many vertices as the connectivity, we can create at most two strong connected components, at most one of which is not a singleton. In this paper we prove an asymptotically sharp upper bound for the number of vertices we can delete without creating two nonsingleton strong components, and we also give sharp upper bounds on the number of singletons that we might create.     

Minimal homogeneous latin trades

A latin trade is a subset of a latin square which may be replaced with a disjoint mate to obtain a new latin square. A d-homogeneous latin trade is one which intersects each row, each column and each entry of the latin square either 0 or d times. In this paper we give a construction for minimal d-homogeneous latin trades of size dm, for every integer d?3, and m?1.75d²+3. We also improve this bound for small values of d. Our proof relies on the construction of cyclic sequences whose adjacent sums are distinct.     

Minimal factorizations of permutations into star transpositions

We give a compact expression for the number of factorizations of any permutation into a minimal number of transpositions of the form . This generalizes earlier work of Pak in which substantial restrictions were placed on the permutation being factored. Our result exhibits an unexpected and simple symmetry of star factorizations that has yet to be explained in a satisfactory manner.     

Acyclic and star colorings of cographs

An acyclic coloring of a graph is a proper vertex coloring such that the union of any two color classes induces a disjoint collection of trees. The more restricted notion of star coloring requires that the union of any two color classes induces a disjoint collection of stars. We prove that every acyclic coloring of a cograph is also a star coloring and give a linear-time algorithm for finding an optimal acyclic and star coloring of a cograph. If the graph is given in the form of a cotree, the algorithm runs in O(n) time. We also show that the acyclic chromatic number, the star chromatic number, the treewidth plus 1, and the pathwidth plus 1 are all equal for cographs.     

A note on the existence of sequences with small star discrepancy

It was shown by Heinrich et al. [The inverse of the star-discrepancy depends linearly on the dimension, Acta Arith. 96 (2001) 279–302] that there exist point sets for which the inverse of the star discrepancy depends linearly on the dimension. In this paper we extend those results by showing that there exist point sets extensible in the modulus and the dimension for which the star discrepancy satisfies a tractability bound for all dimensions and moduli.     

Singular hyperbolicity of star flows on surfaces

In this paper, we prove that every star flow on the closed surface has finitely many chain recurrent classes. Furthermore, it is singular hyperbolic if every non-trivial singular chain component is a graph. As a consequence, every star flow on the 2-sphere or the projective plane is singular hyperbolic.     

Mutually independent hamiltonian cycles for the pancake graphs and the star graphs

A hamiltonian cycle C of a graph G is an ordered set u₁,u₂,…,u_n(G),u₁ of vertices such that u_i≠u_j for i≠j and u_i is adjacent to u_i+1 for every i{1,2,…,n(G)−1} and u_n(G) is adjacent to u₁, where n(G) is the order of G. The vertex u₁ is the starting vertex and u_i is the ith vertex of C. Two hamiltonian cycles C₁=u₁,u₂,…,u_n(G),u₁ and C₂=v₁,v₂,…,v_n(G),v₁ of G are independent if u₁=v₁ and u_i≠v_i for every i{2,3,…,n(G)}. A set of hamiltonian cycles {C₁,C₂,…,C_k} of G is mutually independent if its elements are pairwise independent. The mutually independent hamiltonicity IHC(G) of a graph G is the maximum integer k such that for any vertex u of G there exist k mutually independent hamiltonian cycles of G starting at u.In this paper, the mutually independent hamiltonicity is considered for two families of Cayley graphs, the n-dimensional pancake graphs P_n and the n-dimensional star graphs S_n. It is proven that IHC(P₃)=1, IHC(P_n)=n−1 if n≥4, IHC(S_n)=n−2 if n{3,4} and IHC(S_n)=n−1 if n≥5.     

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.     

Global defensive alliances in star graphs

A defensive alliance in a graph G=(V,E) is a set of vertices S⊆V satisfying the condition that, for each v∈S, at least one half of its closed neighbors are in S. A defensive alliance S is called a critical defensive alliance if any vertex is removed from S, then the resulting vertex set is not a defensive alliance any more. An alliance S is called global if every vertex in V(G)?S is adjacent to at least one member of the alliance S. In this paper, we shall propose a way for finding a critical global defensive alliance of star graphs. After counting the number of vertices in the critical global defensive alliance, we can derive an upper bound to the size of the minimum global defensive alliances in star graphs.     

List star edge coloring of k-degenerate graphs

A star edge coloring of a graph is a proper edge coloring such that every connected 2-colored subgraph is a path with at most 3 edges. Deng et al. and Bezegová et al. independently show that the star chromatic index of a tree with maximum degree $\Delta$ is at most $?\frac{3\Delta }{2}?$, which is tight. In this paper, we study the list star edge coloring of $k$-degenerate graphs. Let $c{h}_{st}^{\prime }\left(G\right)$ be the list star chromatic index of $G$: the minimum $s$ such that for every $s$-list assignment $L$ for the edges, $G$ has a star edge coloring from $L$. By introducing a stronger coloring, we show with a very concise proof that the upper bound on the star chromatic index of trees also holds for list star chromatic index of trees, i.e. $c{h}_{st}^{\prime }\left(T\right)\le ?\frac{3\Delta }{2}?$ for any tree $T$ with maximum degree $\Delta$. And then by applying some orientation technique we present two upper bounds for list star chromatic index of $k$-degenerate graphs.     

Classes of graphs without star forests and related graphs

This work provides a structural characterisation of hereditary graph classes that do not contain a star forest, several graphs obtained from star forests by subset complementation, a union of cliques, and the complement of a union of cliques as induced subgraphs. This provides, for instance, structural results for graph classes not containing a matching and several complements of a matching. In terms of the speed of hereditary graph classes, our results imply that all such classes have at most factorial speed of growth.