Intersection reverse sequences and geometric applications

Pinchasi and Radoi?i? [On the number of edges in geometric graphs with no self-intersecting cycle of length 4, in: J. Pach (Ed.), Towards a Theory of Geometric Graphs, Contemporary Mathematics, vol. 342, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2004] used the following observation to bound the number of edges of a topological graph without a self-crossing cycle of length 4: if we make a list of the neighbors for every vertex in such a graph and order these lists cyclically according to the order of the emanating edges, then the common elements in any two lists have reversed cyclic order. Building on their work we give an improved estimate on the size of the lists having this property. As a consequence we get that a topological graph on n vertices not containing a self-crossing C₄ has O(n^3/2logn) edges. Our result also implies that n pseudo-circles in the plane can be cut into O(n^3/2logn) pseudo-segments, which in turn implies bounds on point-curve incidences and on the complexity of a level of an arrangement of curves.     

On edges crossing few other edges in simple topological complete graphs

We study the existence of edges having few crossings with the other edges in drawings of the complete graph (more precisely, in simple topological complete graphs). A topological graphT=(V,E) is a graph drawn in the plane with vertices represented by distinct points and edges represented by Jordan curves connecting the corresponding pairs of points (vertices), passing through no other vertices, and having the property that any intersection point of two edges is either a common end-point or a point where the two edges properly cross. A topological graph is simple if any two edges meet in at most one common point.Let h=h(n) be the smallest integer such that every simple topological complete graph on n vertices contains an edge crossing at most h other edges. We show that Ω(n^3/2)≤h(n)≤O(n²/log^1/4n). We also show that the analogous function on other surfaces (torus, Klein bottle) grows as cn².     

Edge partitions of optimal 2-plane and 3-plane graphs

A topological graph is a graph drawn in the plane. A topological graph is $k$-plane, $k>0$, if each edge is crossed at most $k$ times. We study the problem of partitioning the edges of a $k$-plane graph such that each partite set forms a graph with a simpler structure. While this problem has been studied for $k=1$, we focus on optimal 2-plane and on optimal 3-plane graphs, which are 2-plane and 3-plane graphs with maximum density. We prove the following results. (i) It is not possible to partition the edges of a simple (i.e., with neither self-loops nor parallel edges) optimal 2-plane graph into a 1-plane graph and a forest, while (ii) an edge partition formed by a 1-plane graph and two plane forests always exists and can be computed in linear time. (iii) There exist efficient algorithms to partition the edges of a simple optimal 2-plane graph into a 1-plane graph and a plane graph with maximum vertex degree at most 12, or with maximum vertex degree at most 8 if the optimal2-plane graph is such that its crossing-free edges form a graph with no separating triangles. (iv) There exists an infinite family of simple optimal 2-plane graphs such that in any edge partition composed of a 1-plane graph and a plane graph, the plane graph has maximum vertex degree at least 6 and the 1-plane graph has maximum vertex degree at least 12. (v) Every optimal 3-plane graph whose crossing-free edges form a biconnected graph can be decomposed, in linear time, into a 2-plane graph and two plane forests.     

A separator theorem for graphs of bounded genus

Many divide-and-conquer algorithms on graphs are based on finding a small set of vertices or edges whose removal divides the graph roughly in half. Most graphs do not have the necessary small separators, but some useful classes do. One such class is planar graphs: If an n-vertex graph can be drawn on the plane, then it can be bisected by removal of O(sqrt(n)) vertices (R. J. Lipton and R. E. Tarjan, SIAM J. Appl. Math.36 (1979), 177–189). The main result of the paper is that if a graph can be drawn on a surface of genus g, then it can be bisected by removal of O(sqrt(gn)) vertices. This bound is best possible to within a constant factor. An algorithm is given for finding the separator that takes time linear in the number of edges in the graph, given an embedding of the graph in its genus surface. Some extensions and applications of these results are discussed.     

Estimates of coefficients of chromatic polynomials and numbers of cliques of (c,n,m)‐graphs

This paper is mainly concerned with classes of simple graphs with exactly c connected components, n vertices and m edges, for fixed c,n,m ∈ ?. We find an optimal lower bound for the ith coefficient of the chromatic polynomial of a graph in such a class and also an optimal upper bound for the number of j‐cliques contained in such a graph. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 42: 81–94, 2003     

On the domination number of the generalized Petersen graphs

Graph domination numbers and algorithms for finding them have been investigated for numerous classes of graphs, usually for graphs that have some kind of tree-like structure. By contrast, we study an infinite family of regular graphs, the generalized Petersen graphs G(n). We give two procedures that between them produce both upper and lower bounds for the (ordinary) domination number of G(n), and we conjecture that our upper bound ⌈3n/5⌉ is the exact domination number. To our knowledge this is one of the first classes of regular graphs for which such a procedure has been used to estimate the domination number.     

Queue layouts of iterated line directed graphs

In this paper, we study queue layouts of iterated line directed graphs. A k-queue layout of a directed graph consists of a linear ordering of the vertices and an assignment of each arc to exactly one of the k queues so that any two arcs assigned to the same queue do not nest. The queuenumber of a directed graph is the minimum number of queues required for a queue layout of the directed graph.We present upper and lower bounds on the queuenumber of an iterated line directed graph L^k(G) of a directed graph G. Our upper bound depends only on G and is independent of the number of iterations k. Queue layouts can be applied to three-dimensional drawings. From the results on the queuenumber of L^k(G), it is shown that for any fixed directed graph G, L^k(G) has a three-dimensional drawing with O(n) volume, where n is the number of vertices in L^k(G). These results are also applied to specific families of iterated line directed graphs such as de Bruijn, Kautz, butterfly, and wrapped butterfly directed graphs. In particular, the queuenumber of k-ary butterfly directed graphs is determined if k is odd.     

Bisections of graphs

A bisection of a graph is a bipartition of its vertex set in which the number of vertices in the two parts differ by at most 1, and its size is the number of edges which go across the two parts. In this paper, motivated by several questions and conjectures of Bollobás and Scott, we study maximum bisections of graphs. First, we extend the classical Edwards bound on maximum cuts to bisections. A simple corollary of our result implies that every graph on n vertices and m   edges with no isolated vertices, and maximum degree at most n/3+1$n/3+1$, admits a bisection of size at least m/2+n/6$m/2+n/6$. Then using the tools that we developed to extend Edwards?s bound, we prove a judicious bisection result which states that graphs with large minimum degree have a bisection in which both parts span relatively few edges. A special case of this general theorem answers a conjecture of Bollobás and Scott, and shows that every graph on n vertices and m   edges of minimum degree at least 2 admits a bisection in which the number of edges in each part is at most (1/3+o(1))m$(1/3+o(1))m$. We also present several other results on bisections of graphs.     

An implicit representation of chordal comparability graphs in linear time

Ma and Spinrad have shown that every transitive orientation of a chordal comparability graph is the intersection of four linear orders. That is, chordal comparability graphs are comparability graphs of posets of dimension four. Among other uses, this gives an implicit representation of a chordal comparability graph using O(n) integers so that, given two vertices, it can be determined in O(1) time whether they are adjacent, no matter how dense the graph is. We give a linear time algorithm for finding the four linear orders, improving on their bound of O(n²).     

On a conjecture of Brouwer involving the connectivity of strongly regular graphs

In this paper, we study a conjecture of Andries E. Brouwer from 1996 regarding the minimum number of vertices of a strongly regular graph whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components.We show that strongly regular graphs constructed from copolar spaces and from the more general spaces called Δ-spaces are counterexamples to Brouwer?s Conjecture. Using J.I. Hall?s characterization of finite reduced copolar spaces, we find that the triangular graphs T(m), the symplectic graphs Sp(2r,q) over the field Fq (for any q prime power), and the strongly regular graphs constructed from the hyperbolic quadrics O⁺(2r,2) and from the elliptic quadrics O⁻(2r,2) over the field F₂, respectively, are counterexamples to Brouwer?s Conjecture. For each of these graphs, we determine precisely the minimum number of vertices whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components. While we are not aware of an analogue of Hall?s characterization theorem for Δ-spaces, we show that complements of the point graphs of certain finite generalized quadrangles are point graphs of Δ-spaces and thus, yield other counterexamples to Brouwer?s Conjecture.We prove that Brouwer?s Conjecture is true for many families of strongly regular graphs including the conference graphs, the generalized quadrangles GQ(q,q) graphs, the lattice graphs, the Latin square graphs, the strongly regular graphs with smallest eigenvalue −2 (except the triangular graphs) and the primitive strongly regular graphs with at most 30 vertices except for few cases.We leave as an open problem determining the best general lower bound for the minimum size of a disconnecting set of vertices of a strongly regular graph, whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components.     

On the Maximum Number of Edges in Topological Graphs with no Four Pairwise Crossing Edges

A topological graph is called k -quasi-planar if it does not contain k pairwise crossing edges. It is conjectured that for every fixed k, the maximum number of edges in a k-quasi-planar graph on n vertices is O(n). We provide an affirmative answer to the case k=4.     

On the girth of extremal graphs without shortest cycles

Let EX(ν;{C₃,…,C_n}) denote the set of graphs G of order ν that contain no cycles of length less than or equal to n which have maximum number of edges. In this paper we consider a problem posed by several authors: does G contain an n+1 cycle? We prove that the diameter of G is at most n−1, and present several results concerning the above question: the girth of G is g=n+1 if (i) ν≥n+5, diameter equal to n−1 and minimum degree at least 3; (ii) ν≥12, ν∉{15,80,170} and n=6. Moreover, if ν=15 we find an extremal graph of girth 8 obtained from a 3-regular complete bipartite graph subdividing its edges. (iii) We prove that if ν≥2n−3 and n≥7 the girth is at most 2n−5. We also show that the answer to the question is negative for ν≤n+1+⌊(n−2)/2⌋.     

New results on the energy of integral circulant graphs

Circulant graphs are an important class of interconnection networks in parallel and distributed computing. Integral circulant graphs play an important role in modeling quantum spin networks supporting the perfect state transfer as well. The integral circulant graph ICG_n(D) has the vertex set Z_n = {0, 1, 2, … , n − 1} and vertices a and b are adjacent if gcd(a − b, n) ∈ D, where D ⊆ {d : d∣n, 1 ? d < n}. These graphs are highly symmetric, have integral spectra and some remarkable properties connecting chemical graph theory and number theory. The energy of a graph was first defined by Gutman, as the sum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix. Recently, there was a vast research for the pairs and families of non-cospectral graphs having equal energies. Following Bapat and Pati [R.B. Bapat, S. Pati, Energy of a graph is never an odd integer, Bull. Kerala Math. Assoc. 1 (2004) 129-132], we characterize the energy of integral circulant graph modulo 4. Furthermore, we establish some general closed form expressions for the energy of integral circulant graphs and generalize some results from Ili? [A. Ili?, The energy of unitary Cayley graphs, Linear Algebra Appl. 431 (2009), 1881-1889]. We close the paper by proposing some open problems and characterizing extremal graphs with minimal energy among integral circulant graphs with n vertices, provided n is even.     

The fine structure of octahedron-free graphs

This paper is one of a series of papers in which, for a family L of graphs, we describe the typical structure of graphs not containing any L∈L. In this paper, we prove sharp results about the case L={O₆}, where O₆ is the graph with 6 vertices and 12 edges, given by the edges of an octahedron. Among others, we prove the following results.(a) The vertex set of almost every O₆-free graph can be partitioned into two classes of almost equal sizes, U₁ and U₂, where the graph spanned by U₁ is a C₄-free and that by U₂ is P₃-free.(b) Similar assertions hold when L is the family of all graphs with 6 vertices and 12 edges.(c) If H is a graph with a color-critical edge and χ(H)=p+1, then almost every sH-free graph becomes p-chromatic after the deletion of some s−1 vertices, where sH is the graph formed by s vertex disjoint copies of H.These results are natural extensions of theorems of classical extremal graph theory. To show that results like those above do not hold in great generality, we provide examples for which the analogs of our results do not hold.     

Clique-critical graphs: Maximum size and recognition

The clique graph of G, K(G), is the intersection graph of the family of cliques (maximal complete sets) of G. Clique-critical graphs were defined as those whose clique graph changes whenever a vertex is removed. We prove that if G has m edges then any clique-critical graph in K^-1(G) has at most 2m vertices, which solves a question posed by Escalante and Toft [On clique-critical graphs, J. Combin. Theory B 17 (1974) 170-182]. The proof is based on a restatement of their characterization of clique-critical graphs. Moreover, the bound is sharp. We also show that the problem of recognizing clique-critical graphs is NP-complete.     

Triangle-free partial graphs and edge covering theorems

In section 1 some lower bounds are given for the maximal number of edges ofa (p ? 1)- colorable partial graph. Among others we show that a graph on n vertices with m edges has a (p?1)-colorable partial graph with at least mT_n.p/(ⁿ₂) edges, where T_n.p denotes the so called Turán number. These results are used to obtain upper bounds for special edge covering numbers of graphs. In Section 2 we prove the following theorem: If G is a simple graph and μ is the maximal cardinality of a triangle-free edge set of G, then the edges of G can be covered by μ triangles and edges. In Section 3 related questions are examined.     

On circle graphs with girth at least five

Circle graphs with girth at least five are known to be 2-degenerate [A.A. Ageev, Every circle graph with girth at least 5 is 3-colourable, Discrete Math. 195 (1999) 229-233]. In this paper, we prove that circle graphs with girth at least g≥5 and minimum degree at least two contain a chain of g−4 vertices of degree two, which implies Ageev’s result in the case g=5. We then use this structural property to give an upper bound on the circular chromatic number of circle graphs with girth at least g≥5 as well as a precise estimate of their maximum average degree.     

On the nullity of tricyclic graphs

The nullity of a graph G, denoted by η(G), is the multiplicity of the eigenvalue zero in its spectrum. It is known that η(G)?n-2 if G is a simple graph on n vertices and G is not isomorphic to nK₁. The extremal graphs attaining the upper bound n-2 and the second upper bound n-3 have been obtained. In this paper, the graphs with nullity n-4 are characterized. Furthermore the tricyclic graphs with maximum nullity are discussed.     

On the number of components in 2-factors of claw-free graphs

In this paper, we prove that if a claw-free graph G with minimum degree δ?4 has no maximal clique of two vertices, then G has a 2-factor with at most (|G|-1)/4 components. This upper bound is best possible. Additionally, we give a family of claw-free graphs with minimum degree δ?4 in which every 2-factor contains more than n/δ components.