Counting perfect matchings in n-extendable graphs

The structural theory of matchings is used to establish lower bounds on the number of perfect matchings in n-extendable graphs. It is shown that any such graph on p vertices and q edges contains at least ⌈(n+1)!/4[q-p-(n-1)(2Δ-3)+4]⌉ different perfect matchings, where Δ is the maximum degree of a vertex in G.     

On the 2-rainbow domination in graphs

The concept of 2-rainbow domination of a graph G coincides with the ordinary domination of the prism G□K₂. In this paper, we show that the problem of deciding if a graph has a 2-rainbow dominating function of a given weight is NP-complete even when restricted to bipartite graphs or chordal graphs. Exact values of 2-rainbow domination numbers of several classes of graphs are found, and it is shown that for the generalized Petersen graphs GP(n,k) this number is between ⌈4n/5⌉ and n with both bounds being sharp.     

A note on domination, girth and minimum degree

Let G be a graph of order n, minimum degree δ?2, girth g?5 and domination number γ. In 1990 Brigham and Dutton [Bounds on the domination number of a graph, Q. J. Math., Oxf. II. Ser. 41 (1990) 269-275] proved that γ?⌈n/2-g/6⌉. This result was recently improved by Volkmann [Upper bounds on the domination number of a graph in terms of diameter and girth, J. Combin. Math. Combin. Comput. 52 (2005) 131-141; An upper bound for the domination number of a graph in terms of order and girth, J. Combin. Math. Combin. Comput. 54 (2005) 195-212] who for i∈{1,2} determined a finite set of graphs G_i such that γ?⌈n/2-g/6-(3i+3)/6⌉ unless G is a cycle or G∈G_i.Our main result is that for every i∈N there is a finite set of graphs G_i such that γ?n/2-g/6-i unless G is a cycle or G∈G_i. Furthermore, we conjecture another improvement of Brigham and Dutton's bound and prove a weakened version of this conjecture.     

Energy of unitary Cayley graphs and gcd-graphs

This work is based on ideas of Ili? [A. Ili?, The energy of unitary Cayley graphs, Linear Algebra Appl. 431 (2009) 1881-1889] on the energy of unitary Cayley graph. For a finite commutative ring R with unity , the unitary Cayley graph of R is the Cayley graph whose vertex set is R and the edge set is {{a,b}:a,b∈Randa-b∈R^×}, where R^× is the group of units of R. We study the eigenvalues of the unitary Cayley graph of a finite commutative ring and some gcd-graphs and compute their energy. Moreover, we obtain the energy for the complement of unitary Cayley graphs.     

On a pursuit game on cayley graphs

The game cops and robbers is considered on Cayley graphs of abelian groups. It is proved that if the graph has degreed, then [(d+1)/2] cops are sufficient to catch one robber. This bound is often best possible.     

Cycles through specified vertices

Recently, various authors have obtained results about the existence of long cycles in graphs with a given minimum degreed. We extend these results to the case where only some of the vertices are known to have degree at leastd, and we want to find a cycle through as many of these vertices as possible. IfG is a graph onn vertices andW is a set ofw vertices of degree at leastd, we prove that there is a cycle through at least vertices ofW. We also find the extremal graphs for this property.Research supported in part by NSF Grant DMS 8806097     

Colorings Of Plane Graphs With No Rainbow Faces

We prove that each n-vertex plane graph with girth g≥4 admits a vertex coloring with at least ⌈n/2⌉+1 colors with no rainbow face, i.e., a face in which all vertices receive distinct colors. This proves a conjecture of Ramamurthi and West. Moreover, we prove for plane graph with girth g≥5 that there is a vertex coloring with at least if g is odd and if g is even. The bounds are tight for all pairs of n and g with g≥4 and n≥5g/2−3. * Supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Slovenia, Research Project Z1-3129 and by a postdoctoral fellowship of PIMS. ** Institute for Theoretical Computer Science is supported by Ministry of Education of CzechR epublic as project LN00A056.     

Eliminating graphs by means of parallel knock-out schemes

In 1997 Lampert and Slater introduced parallel knock-out schemes, an iterative process on graphs that goes through several rounds. In each round of this process, every vertex eliminates exactly one of its neighbors. The parallel knock-out number of a graph is the minimum number of rounds after which all vertices have been eliminated (if possible). The parallel knock-out number is related to well-known concepts like perfect matchings, hamiltonian cycles, and 2-factors.We derive a number of combinatorial and algorithmic results on parallel knock-out numbers: for families of sparse graphs (like planar graphs or graphs of bounded tree-width), the parallel knock-out number grows at most logarithmically with the number n of vertices; this bound is basically tight for trees. Furthermore, there is a family of bipartite graphs for which the parallel knock-out number grows proportionally to the square root of n. We characterize trees with parallel knock-out number at most 2, and we show that the parallel knock-out number for trees can be computed in polynomial time via a dynamic programming approach (whereas in general graphs this problem is known to be NP-hard). Finally, we prove that the parallel knock-out number of a claw-free graph is either infinite or less than or equal to 2.     

Distance spectra and distance energy of integral circulant graphs

The distance energy of a graph G is a recently developed energy-type invariant, defined as the sum of absolute values of the eigenvalues of the distance matrix of G. There was a vast research for the pairs and families of non-cospectral graphs having equal distance energy, and most of these constructions were based on the join of graphs. A graph is called circulant if it is Cayley graph on the circulant group, i.e. its adjacency matrix is circulant. A graph is called integral if all eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix are integers. Integral circulant graphs play an important role in modeling quantum spin networks supporting the perfect state transfer. In this paper, we characterize the distance spectra of integral circulant graphs and prove that these graphs have integral eigenvalues of distance matrix D. Furthermore, we calculate the distance spectra and distance energy of unitary Cayley graphs. In conclusion, we present two families of pairs (G₁,G₂) of integral circulant graphs with equal distance energy - in the first family G₁ is subgraph of G₂, while in the second family the diameter of both graphs is three.     

A note on the signless Laplacian eigenvalues of graphs

In this paper, we consider the signless Laplacians of simple graphs and we give some eigenvalue inequalities. We first consider an interlacing theorem when a vertex is deleted. In particular, let G-v be a graph obtained from graph G by deleting its vertex v and κ_i(G) be the ith largest eigenvalue of the signless Laplacian of G, we show that κ_i+1(G)-1?κ_i(G-v)?κ_i(G). Next, we consider the third largest eigenvalue κ₃(G) and we give a lower bound in terms of the third largest degree d₃ of the graph G. In particular, we prove that . Furthermore, we show that in several situations the latter bound can be increased to d₃-1.     

Tree-decompositions with bags of small diameter

This paper deals with the length of a Robertson-Seymour's tree-decomposition. The tree-length of a graph is the largest distance between two vertices of a bag of a tree-decomposition, minimized over all tree-decompositions of the graph. The study of this invariant may be interesting in its own right because the class of bounded tree-length graphs includes (but is not reduced to) bounded chordality graphs (like interval graphs, permutation graphs, AT-free graphs, etc.). For instance, we show that the tree-length of any outerplanar graph is ⌈k/3⌉, where k is the chordality of the graph, and we compute the tree-length of meshes.More fundamentally we show that any algorithm computing a tree-decomposition approximating the tree-width (or the tree-length) of an n-vertex graph by a factor α or less does not give an α-approximation of the tree-length (resp. the tree-width) unless if α=Ω(n^1/5). We complete these results presenting several polynomial time constant approximate algorithms for the tree-length.The introduction of this parameter is motivated by the design of compact distance labeling, compact routing tables with near-optimal route length, and by the construction of sparse additive spanners.     

A sharp upper bound on algebraic connectivity using domination number

Let G be a connected graph of order n. The algebraic connectivity of G is the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix of G. A dominating set in G is a vertex subset S such that each vertex of G that is not in S is adjacent to a vertex in S. The least cardinality of a dominating set is the domination number. In this paper, we prove a sharp upper bound on the algebraic connectivity of a connected graph in terms of the domination number and characterize the associated extremal graphs.     

A note on the strength and minimum color sum of bipartite graphs

The strength of a graph G is the smallest integer s such that there exists a minimum sum coloring of G using integers {1,…,s}, only. For bipartite graphs of maximum degree Δ we show the following simple bound: s≤⌈Δ/2⌉+1. As a consequence, there exists a quadratic time algorithm for determining the strength and minimum color sum of bipartite graphs of maximum degree Δ≤4.     

Mutual exclusion scheduling with interval graphs or related classes. Part II

This paper is the second part of a study devoted to the mutual exclusion scheduling problem. Given a simple and undirected graph G and an integer k, the problem is to find a minimum coloring of G such that each color is used at most k times. The cardinality of such a coloring is denoted by χ(G,k). When restricted to interval graphs or related classes like circular-arc graphs and tolerance graphs, the problem has some applications in workforce planning. Unfortunately, the problem is shown to be NP-hard for interval graphs, even if k is a constant greater than or equal to four [H.L. Bodlaender, K. Jansen, Restrictions of graph partition problems. Part I. Theoret. Comput. Sci. 148 (1995) 93-109]. In this paper, the problem is approached from a different point of view by studying a non-trivial and practical sufficient condition for optimality. In particular, the following proposition is demonstrated: if an interval graph G admits a coloring such that each color appears at least k times, then χ(G,k)=⌈n/k⌉. This proposition is extended to several classes of graphs related to interval graphs. Moreover, all our proofs are constructive and provide efficient algorithms to solve the MES problem for these graphs, given a coloring satisfying the condition in input.     

Maximum generic nullity of a graph

For a graph G of order n, the maximum nullity of G is defined to be the largest possible nullity over all real symmetric n×n matrices A whose (i,j)th entry (for i≠j) is nonzero whenever {i,j} is an edge in G and is zero otherwise. Maximum nullity and the related parameter minimum rank of the same set of matrices have been studied extensively. A new parameter, maximum generic nullity, is introduced. Maximum generic nullity provides insight into the structure of the null-space of a matrix realizing maximum nullity of a graph. It is shown that maximum generic nullity is bounded above by edge connectivity and below by vertex connectivity. Results on random graphs are used to show that as n goes to infinity almost all graphs have equal maximum generic nullity, vertex connectivity, edge connectivity, and minimum degree.     

On perturbations of almost distance-regular graphs

In this paper we show that certain almost distance-regular graphs, the so-called h-punctually walk-regular graphs, can be characterized through the cospectrality of their perturbed graphs. A graph G with diameter D is called h-punctually walk-regular, for a given h≤D, if the number of paths of length ? between a pair of vertices u,v at distance h depends only on ?. The graph perturbations considered here are deleting a vertex, adding a loop, adding a pendant edge, adding/removing an edge, amalgamating vertices, and adding a bridging vertex. We show that for walk-regular graphs some of these operations are equivalent, in the sense that one perturbation produces cospectral graphs if and only if the others do. Our study is based on the theory of graph perturbations developed by Cvetkovi?, Godsil, McKay, Rowlinson, Schwenk, and others. As a consequence, some new characterizations of distance-regular graphs are obtained.     

Semisymmetric graphs

Let be a regular covering projection of connected graphs with the group of covering transformations isomorphic to N. If N is an elementary abelian p-group, then the projection ℘_N is called p-elementary abelian. The projection ℘_N is vertex-transitive (edge-transitive) if some vertex-transitive (edge-transitive) subgroup of the automorphism group of X lifts along ℘_N, and semisymmetric if it is edge- but not vertex-transitive. The projection ℘_N is minimal semisymmetric if it cannot be written as a composition ℘_N=℘℘_M of two (nontrivial) regular covering projections, where ℘_M is semisymmetric.Malni? et al. [Semisymmetric elementary abelian covers of the Möbius-Kantor graph, Discrete Math. 307 (2007) 2156-2175] determined all pairwise nonisomorphic minimal semisymmetric elementary abelian regular covering projections of the Möbius-Kantor graph, the Generalized Petersen graph GP(8,3), by explicitly giving the corresponding voltage rules generating the covering projections. It was remarked at the end of the above paper that the covering graphs arising from these covering projections need not themselves be semisymmetric (a graph with regular valency is said to be semisymmetric if its automorphism group is edge- but not vertex-transitive). In this paper it is shown that all these covering graphs are indeed semisymmetric.     

Vertex and edge PI indices of Cartesian product graphs

The Padmakar-Ivan (PI) index of a graph G is the sum over all edges uv of G of the number of edges which are not equidistant from u and v. In this paper, the notion of vertex PI index of a graph is introduced. We apply this notion to compute an exact expression for the PI index of Cartesian product of graphs. This extends a result by Klavzar [On the PI index: PI-partitions and Cartesian product graphs, MATCH Commun. Math. Comput. Chem. 57 (2007) 573-586] for bipartite graphs. Some important properties of vertex PI index are also investigated.     

On induced and isometric embeddings of graphs into the strong product of paths

The strong isometric dimension and the adjacent isometric dimension of graphs are compared. The concepts are equivalent for graphs of diameter 2 in which case the problem of determining these dimensions can be reduced to a covering problem with complete bipartite graphs. Using this approach several exact strong and adjacent dimensions are computed (for instance of the Petersen graph) and a positive answer is given to the Problem 4.1 of Fitzpatrick and Nowakowski [The strong isometric dimension of finite reflexive graphs, Discuss. Math. Graph Theory 20 (2000) 23-38] whether there is a graph G with the strong isometric dimension bigger that ⌈|V(G)|/2⌉.     

An upper bound for Cubicity in terms of Boxicity

An axis-parallel b-dimensional box is a Cartesian product R₁×R₂×?×R_b where each R_i (for 1≤i≤b) is a closed interval of the form [a_i,b_i] on the real line. The boxicity of any graph G, is the minimum positive integer b such that G can be represented as the intersection graph of axis-parallel b-dimensional boxes. A b-dimensional cube is a Cartesian product R₁×R₂×?×R_b, where each R_i (for 1≤i≤b) is a closed interval of the form [a_i,a_i+1] on the real line. When the boxes are restricted to be axis-parallel cubes in b-dimension, the minimum dimension b required to represent the graph is called the cubicity of the graph (denoted by ). In this paper we prove that , where n is the number of vertices in the graph. We also show that this upper bound is tight.Some immediate consequences of the above result are listed below:

1.

Planar graphs have cubicity at most 3⌈log₂n⌉.

2.

Outer planar graphs have cubicity at most 2⌈log₂n⌉.

3.

Any graph of treewidth tw has cubicity at most (tw+2)⌈log₂n⌉. Thus, chordal graphs have cubicity at most (ω+1)⌈log₂n⌉ and circular arc graphs have cubicity at most (2ω+1)⌈log₂n⌉, where ω is the clique number.

The above upper bounds are tight, but for small constant factors.