Decomposability index of tournaments

Given a tournament $T$, a module of $T$ is a subset $X$ of $V\left(T\right)$ such that for $x,y\in X$ and $v\in V\left(T\right)?X$, $(x,v)\in A\left(T\right)$ if and only if $(y,v)\in A\left(T\right)$. The trivial modules of $T$ are $?$, $\left\{u\right\}$ $(u\in V\left(T\right))$ and $V\left(T\right)$. The tournament $T$ is indecomposable if all its modules are trivial; otherwise it is decomposable. The decomposability index of $T$, denoted by $\delta \left(T\right)$, is the smallest number of arcs of $T$ that must be reversed to make $T$ indecomposable. For $n\ge 5$, let $\delta \left(n\right)$ be the maximum of $\delta \left(T\right)$ over the tournaments $T$ with $n$ vertices. We prove that $?\frac{n+1}{4}?\le \delta \left(n\right)\le ?\frac{n?1}{3}?$ and that the lower bound is reached by the transitive tournaments.     

Contraction of cyclic codes over finite chain rings

In this paper, $R$ is a finite chain ring with residue field ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ and $\gamma$ is a unit in $R.$ By assuming that the multiplicative order $u$ of $\gamma$ is coprime to $q,$ we give the trace-representation of any simple-root $\gamma$-constacyclic code over $R$ of length $?,$ and on the other hand show that any cyclic code over $R$ of length $u?$ is a direct sum of trace-representable cyclic codes. Finally, we characterize the simple-root, contractable and cyclic codes over $R$ of length $u?$ into $\gamma$-constacyclic codes of length $?.$     

b-coloring of Kneser graphs

A $b$-coloring of a graph $G$ with $k$ colors is a proper coloring of $G$ using $k$ colors in which each color class contains a color dominating vertex, that is, a vertex which has a neighbor in each of the other color classes. The largest positive integer $k$ for which $G$ has a $b$-coloring using $k$ colors is the $b$-chromatic number $b\left(G\right)$ of $G$. The $b$-spectrum $S_b\left(G\right)$ of a graph $G$ is the set of positive integers $k,\chi \left(G\right)\le k\le b\left(G\right)$, for which $G$ has a $b$-coloring using $k$ colors. A graph $G$ is $b$-continuous if $S_b\left(G\right)$ = the closed interval $[\chi \left(G\right),b\left(G\right)]$. In this paper, we obtain an upper bound for the $b$-chromatic number of some families of Kneser graphs. In addition we establish that $[\chi \left(G\right),n+k+1]?S_b\left(G\right)$ for the Kneser graph $G=K(2n+k,n)$ whenever $3\le n\le k+1$. We also establish the $b$-continuity of some families of regular graphs which include the family of odd graphs.     

On the existence of 3-way k-homogeneous Latin trades

A $\mu$-way Latin trade of volume $s$ is a collection of $\mu$ partial Latin squares $T_1,T_2,\dots ,T_{\mu }$, containing exactly the same $s$ filled cells, such that, if cell $(i,j)$ is filled, it contains a different entry in each of the $\mu$ partial Latin squares, and such that row $i$ in each of the $\mu$ partial Latin squares contains, set-wise, the same symbols, and column $j$ likewise. It is called a $\mu$-way$k$-homogeneous Latin trade if, in each row and each column, $T_r$, for $1\le r\le \mu$, contains exactly $k$ elements, and each element appears in $T_r$ exactly $k$ times. It is also denoted as a $(\mu ,k,m)$ Latin trade, where $m$ is the size of the partial Latin squares.We introduce some general constructions for $\mu$-way $k$-homogeneous Latin trades, and specifically show that, for all $k\le m$, $6\le k\le 13$, and $k=15$, and for all $k\le m$, $k=4,5$ (except for four specific values), a $3$-way $k$-homogeneous Latin trade of volume $km$ exists. We also show that there is no $(3,4,6)$ Latin trade and there is no $(3,4,7)$ Latin trade. Finally, we present general results on the existence of $3$-way $k$-homogeneous Latin trades for some modulo classes of $m$.     

On perfect 2-colorings of the q-ary n-cube

A coloring of a $q$-ary $n$-dimensional cube (hypercube) is called perfect if, for every $n$-tuple $x$, the collection of the colors of the neighbors of $x$ depends only on the color of $x$. A Boolean-valued function is called correlation-immune of degree $n?m$ if it takes value $1$ the same number of times for each $m$-dimensional face of the hypercube. Let $f={\chi }^S$ be a characteristic function of a subset $S$ of hypercube. In the present paper we prove the inequality $\rho \left(S\right)q(\mathrm{cor}\left(f\right)+1)\le \alpha \left(S\right)$, where $\mathrm{cor}\left(f\right)$ is the maximum degree of the correlation immunity of $f$, $\alpha \left(S\right)$ is the average number of neighbors in the set $S$ for $n$-tuples in the complement of a set $S$, and $\rho \left(S\right)=\left|S\right|/q^n$ is the density of the set $S$. Moreover, the function $f$ is a perfect coloring if and only if we have an equality in the formula above. Also, we find a new lower bound for the cardinality of components of a perfect coloring and a 1-perfect code in the case $q>2$.     

A new formula for the decycling number of regular graphs

The decycling number $?\left(G\right)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest number of vertices which can be removed from $G$ so that the resultant graph contains no cycle. A decycling set containing exactly $?\left(G\right)$ vertices of $G$ is called a $?$-set. For any decycling set $S$ of a $k$-regular graph $G$, we show that $\left|S\right|=\frac{\beta \left(G\right)+m\left(S\right)}{k?1}$, where $\beta \left(G\right)$ is the cycle rank of $G$, $m\left(S\right)=c+\left|E\left(S\right)\right|?1$ is the margin number of $S$, $c$ and $\left|E\left(S\right)\right|$ are, respectively, the number of components of $G?S$ and the number of edges in $G\left[S\right]$. In particular, for any $?$-set $S$ of a 3-regular graph $G$, we prove that $m\left(S\right)=\xi \left(G\right)$, where $\xi \left(G\right)$ is the Betti deficiency of $G$. This implies that the decycling number of a 3-regular graph $G$ is $\frac{\beta \left(G\right)+\xi \left(G\right)}{2}$. Hence $?\left(G\right)=?\frac{\beta \left(G\right)}{2}?$ for a 3-regular upper-embeddable graph $G$, which concludes the results in [Gao et al., 2015, Wei and Li, 2013] and solves two open problems posed by Bau and Beineke (2002). Considering an algorithm by Furst et al., (1988), there exists a polynomial time algorithm to compute $Z\left(G\right)$, the cardinality of a maximum nonseparating independent set in a $3$-regular graph $G$, which solves an open problem raised by Speckenmeyer (1988). As for a 4-regular graph $G$, we show that for any $?$-set $S$ of $G$, there exists a spanning tree $T$ of $G$ such that the elements of $S$ are simply the leaves of $T$ with at most two exceptions providing $?\left(G\right)=?\frac{\beta \left(G\right)}{3}?$. On the other hand, if $G$ is a loopless graph on $n$ vertices with maximum degree at most $4$, then

The above two upper bounds are tight, and this makes an extension of a result due to Punnim (2006).     

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.