Sandpile groups and spanning trees of directed line graphs

We generalize a theorem of Knuth relating the oriented spanning trees of a directed graph G and its directed line graph LG. The sandpile group is an abelian group associated to a directed graph, whose order is the number of oriented spanning trees rooted at a fixed vertex. In the case when G is regular of degree k, we show that the sandpile group of G is isomorphic to the quotient of the sandpile group of LG by its k-torsion subgroup. As a corollary we compute the sandpile groups of two families of graphs widely studied in computer science, the de Bruijn graphs and Kautz graphs.     

The abelian sandpile model on randomly rooted graphs and self-similar groups

The Abelian sandpile model is an archetypical model of the physical phenomenon of self-organized criticality. It is also well studied in combinatorics under the name of chip-firing games on graphs. One of the main open problems about this model is to provide rigorous mathematical explication for predictions about the values of its critical exponents, originating in physics. The model was initially defined on the cubic lattices ? ^d , but the only case where the value of some critical exponent has been established so far is the case of the infinite regular tree—the Bethe lattice. This paper is devoted to the study of the abelian sandpile model on a large class of graphs that serve as approximations to Julia sets of postcritically finite polynomials and occur naturally in the study of automorphism group actions on infinite rooted trees. While different from the square lattice, these graphs share many of its geometric properties: they are of polynomial growth, have one end, and random walks on them are recurrent. This ensures that the behaviour of sandpiles on them is quite different from that observed on the infinite tree. We compute the critical exponent for the decay of mass of sand avalanches on these graphs and prove that it is inversely proportional to the rate of polynomial growth of the graph, thus providing the first rigorous derivation of the critical exponent different from the mean-field (the tree) value.     

Chip-Firing and Riemann-Roch Theory for Directed Graphs

Baker and Norine developed a graph theoretic analogue of the classical Riemann-Roch theorem. Amini and Manjunath extended their criteria to all full-dimensional lattices orthogonal to the all ones vector. We show that Amini and Manjunath?s criteria holds for all full-dimensional lattices orthogonal to some positive vector and study some combinatorial examples of such lattices. Two distinct generalizations of the chip-firing game of Baker and Norine to directed graphs are provided. We describe how the “row” chip-firing game is related to the sandpile model and the “column” chip-firing game is related to directed G-parking functions. We finish with a discussion of arithmetical graphs, introduced by Lorenzini, viewing them as a class of vertex weighted graphs whose Laplacian is orthogonal to a positive vector and describe how they may be viewed as a special class of unweighted strongly connected directed graphs.     

The Abelian sandpile model on Ferrers graphs — A classification of recurrent configurations

We classify all recurrent configurations of the Abelian sandpile model (ASM) on Ferrers graphs. The classification is in terms of decorations of EW-tableaux, which undecorated are in bijection with the minimal recurrent configurations. We introduce decorated permutations, extending to decorated EW-tableaux a bijection between such tableaux and permutations, giving a direct bijection between the decorated permutations and all recurrent configurations of the ASM. We also describe a bijection between the decorated permutations and the intransitive trees of Postnikov, the breadth-first search of which corresponds to a canonical toppling of the corresponding configurations.     

Special Eccentric Vertices for the Class of Chordal Graphs and Related Classes

A vertex is simplicial if the vertices of its neighborhood are pairwise adjacent. It is known that, for every vertex v of a chordal graph, there exists a simplicial vertex among the vertices at maximum distance from v. Here we prove similar properties in other classes of graphs related to that of chordal graphs. Those properties will not be in terms of simplicial vertices, but in terms of other types of vertices that are used to characterize those classes.     

On the Metric Dimension of Infinite Graphs

A set of vertices S resolves a connected graph G if every vertex is uniquely determined by its vector of distances to the vertices in S. The metric dimension of a graph G is the minimum cardinality of a resolving set. In this paper we undertake the metric dimension of infinite locally finite graphs, i.e., those infinite graphs such that all its vertices have finite degree. We give some necessary conditions for an infinite graph to have finite metric dimension and characterize infinite trees with finite metric dimension. We also establish some general results about the metric dimension of the Cartesian product of finite and infinite graphs, and obtain the metric dimension of the Cartesian product of several families of graphs.     

Tropical hyperelliptic curves

We study the locus of tropical hyperelliptic curves inside the moduli space of tropical curves of genus g. We define a harmonic morphism of metric graphs and prove that a metric graph is hyperelliptic if and only if it admits a harmonic morphism of degree 2 to a metric tree. This generalizes the work of Baker and Norine on combinatorial graphs to the metric case. We then prove that the locus of 2-edge-connected genus g tropical hyperelliptic curves is a (2g?1)-dimensional stacky polyhedral fan whose maximal cells are in bijection with trees on g?1 vertices with maximum valence 3. Finally, we show that the Berkovich skeleton of a classical hyperelliptic plane curve satisfying a certain tropical smoothness condition is a standard ladder of genus g.     

On encodings of spanning trees

Deo and Micikevicius recently gave a new bijection for spanning trees of complete bipartite graphs. In this paper we devise a generalization of Deo and Micikevicius's method, which is also a modification of Olah's method for encoding the spanning trees of any complete multipartite graph K(n₁,…,n_r). We also give a bijection between the spanning trees of a planar graph and those of any of its planar duals. Finally we discuss the possibility of bijections for spanning trees of DeBriujn graphs, cubes, and regular graphs such as the Petersen graph that have integer eigenvalues.     

Antimagic labeling of generalized pyramid graphs

An antimagic labeling of a graph withq edges is a bijection from the set of edges to the set of positive integers{1,2,...,q}such that all vertex weights are pairwise distinct,where the vertex weight of a vertex is the sum of the labels of all edges incident with that vertex.A graph is antimagic if it has an antimagic labeling.In this paper,we provide antimagic labelings for a family of generalized pyramid graphs.     

Minimum sum set coloring of trees and line graphs of trees

In this paper, we study the minimum sum set coloring (MSSC) problem which consists in assigning a set of x(v) positive integers to each vertex v of a graph so that the intersection of sets assigned to adjacent vertices is empty and the sum of the assigned set of numbers to each vertex of the graph is minimum. The MSSC problem occurs in two versions: non-preemptive and preemptive. We show that the MSSC problem is strongly NP-hard both in the preemptive case on trees and in the non-preemptive case in line graphs of trees. Finally, we give exact parameterized algorithms for these two versions on trees and line graphs of trees.     

Clique trees of chordal graphs: leafage and 3-asteroidals

Chordal graphs were characterized as those graphs having a tree, called clique tree, whose vertices are the cliques of the graph and for every vertex in the graph, the set of cliques that contain it form a subtree of clique tree. In this work, we study the relationship between the clique trees of a chordal graph and its subgraphs. We will prove that clique trees can be described locally and all clique trees of a graph can be obtained from clique trees of subgraphs. In particular, we study the leafage of chordal graphs, that is the minimum number of leaves among the clique trees of the graph. It is known that interval graphs are chordal graphs without 3-asteroidals. We will prove a generalization of this result using the framework developed in the present article. We prove that in a clique tree that realizes the leafage, for every vertex of degree at least 3, and every choice of 3 branches incident to it, there is a 3−asteroidal in these branches.     

The continuum limit of critical random graphs

We consider the Erd?s–Rényi random graph G(n, p) inside the critical window, that is when p?=?1/n?+?λn ^?4/3, for some fixed ${\lambda \in \mathbb{R}}$ . We prove that the sequence of connected components of G(n, p), considered as metric spaces using the graph distance rescaled by n ^?1/3, converges towards a sequence of continuous compact metric spaces. The result relies on a bijection between graphs and certain marked random walks, and the theory of continuum random trees. Our result gives access to the answers to a great many questions about distances in critical random graphs. In particular, we deduce that the diameter of G(n, p) rescaled by n ^?1/3 converges in distribution to an absolutely continuous random variable with finite mean.     

A Construction of Sequentially Cohen-Macaulay Graphs

For every simple graph G,a class of multiple clique cluster-whiskered graphs Geπm is introduced,and it is shown that all such graphs are vertex decomposable;thus,the independence simplicial complex IndGeπm is sequentially Cohen-Macaulay.The properties of the graphs Geπm and Gπ constructed by Cook and Nagel are studied,including the enumeration of facets of the complex Ind Gπ and the calculation of Betti numbers of the cover ideal Ic(Geπ").We also prove that the complex △ =IndH is strongly shellable and pure for either a Boolean graph H =Bn or the full clique-whiskered graph H =Gw of G,which is obtained by adding a whisker to each vertex of G.This implies that both the facet ideal I(△) and the cover ideal Ic(H) have linear quotients.     

Minimum vertex covers and the spectrum of the normalized Laplacian on trees

We show that, in the graph spectrum of the normalized graph Laplacian on trees, the eigenvalue 1 and eigenvalues near 1 are strongly related to minimum vertex covers.In particular, for the eigenvalue 1, its multiplicity is related to the size of a minimum vertex cover, and zero entries of its eigenvectors correspond to vertices in minimum vertex covers; while for eigenvalues near 1, their distance to 1 can be estimated from minimum vertex covers; and for the largest eigenvalue smaller than 1, the sign graphs of its eigenvectors take vertices in a minimum vertex cover as representatives.     

2K2 vertex-set partition into nonempty parts

A graph is 2K₂-partitionable if its vertex set can be partitioned into four nonempty parts A, B, C, D such that each vertex of A is adjacent to each vertex of B, and each vertex of C is adjacent to each vertex of D. Determining whether an arbitrary graph is 2K₂-partitionable is the only vertex-set partition problem into four nonempty parts according to external constraints whose computational complexity is open. We show that for C₄-free graphs, circular-arc graphs, spiders, P₄-sparse graphs, and bipartite graphs the 2K₂-partition problem can be solved in polynomial time.     

The cover pebbling number of graphs

A pebbling move on a graph consists of taking two pebbles off of one vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. In the traditional pebbling problem we try to reach a specified vertex of the graph by a sequence of pebbling moves. In this paper we investigate the case when every vertex of the graph must end up with at least one pebble after a series of pebbling moves. The cover pebbling number of a graph is the minimum number of pebbles such that however the pebbles are initially placed on the vertices of the graph we can eventually put a pebble on every vertex simultaneously. We find the cover pebbling numbers of trees and some other graphs. We also consider the more general problem where (possibly different) given numbers of pebbles are required for the vertices.     

Crown reductions for the Minimum Weighted Vertex Cover problem

The paper studies crown reductions for the Minimum Weighted Vertex Cover problem introduced recently in the unweighted case by Fellows et al. [Blow-Ups, Win/Win's and crown rules: some new directions in FPT, in: Proceedings of the 29th International Workshop on Graph Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG’03), Lecture notes in computer science, vol. 2880, 2003, pp. 1-12, Kernelization algorithms for the vertex cover problem: theory and experiments, in: Proceedings of the Workshop on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments (ALENEX), New Orleans, Louisiana, January 2004, pp. 62-69]. We describe in detail a close relation of crown reductions to Nemhauser and Trotter reductions that are based on the linear programming relaxation of the problem. We introduce and study the so-called strong crown reductions, suitable for finding (or counting) all minimum vertex covers, or finding a minimum vertex cover under some additional constraints. It is described how crown decompositions and strong crown decompositions suitable for such problems can be computed in polynomial time. For weighted König-Egerváry graphs (G,w) we observe that the set of vertices belonging to all minimum vertex covers, and the set of vertices belonging to no minimum vertex covers, can be efficiently computed.Further, for some specific classes of graphs, simple algorithms for the MIN-VC problem with a constant approximation factor r<2 are provided. On the other hand, we conclude that for the regular graphs, or for the Hamiltonian connected graphs, the problem is as hard to approximate as for general graphs.It is demonstrated how the results about strong crown reductions can be used to achieve a linear size problem kernel for some related vertex cover problems.     

Matching Trees for Simplicial Complexes and Homotopy Type of Devoid Complexes of Graphs

We generalize some homotopy calculation techniques such as splittings and matching trees that are introduced for the computations in the case of the independence complexes of graphs to arbitrary simplicial complexes. We then exemplify their efficiency on some simplicial complexes, the devoid complexes of graphs, \(\mathcal {D}(G;\mathcal {F})\) whose faces are vertex subsets of G that induce \(\mathcal {F}\)-free subgraphs, where G is a multigraph and \(\mathcal {F}\) is a family of multigraphs. Additionally, we compute the homotopy type of dominance complexes of chordal graphs.     

On anti-magic labeling for graph products

An anti-magic labeling of a finite simple undirected graph with p vertices and q edges is a bijection from the set of edges to the set of integers {1,2,…,q} such that the vertex sums are pairwise distinct, where the vertex sum at one vertex is the sum of labels of all edges incident to such vertex. A graph is called anti-magic if it admits an anti-magic labeling. Hartsfield and Ringel conjectured in 1990 that all connected graphs except K₂ are anti-magic. Recently, Alon et al. showed that this conjecture is true for dense graphs, i.e. it is true for p-vertex graphs with minimum degree Ω(logp). In this article, new classes of sparse anti-magic graphs are constructed through Cartesian products and lexicographic products.     

Domatic partitions of computable graphs

Given a graph G, we say that a subset D of the vertex set V is a dominating set if it is near all the vertices, in that every vertex outside of D is adjacent to a vertex in D. A domatic k-partition of G is a partition of V into k dominating sets. In this paper, we will consider issues of computability related to domatic partitions of computable graphs. Our investigation will center on answering two types of questions for the case when k = 3. First, if domatic 3-partitions exist in a computable graph, how complicated can they be? Second, a decision problem: given a graph, how difficult is it to decide whether it has a domatic 3-partition? We will completely classify this decision problem for highly computable graphs, locally finite computable graphs, and computable graphs in general. Specifically, we show the decision problems for these kinds of graphs to be ${\Pi^{0}_{1}}$ -, ${\Pi^{0}_{2}}$ -, and ${\Sigma^{1}_{1}}$ -complete, respectively.