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1. Fixing Numbers of Point-Block Incidence Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.3390/math11061322  

   Brooks, Josephine; Carbonero, Alvaro; Vargas, Joseph; Flórez, Rigoberto; Rooney, Brendan; Narayan, Darren A (March 2023, Mathematics)

   A vertex in a graph is referred to as fixed if it is mapped to itself under every automorphism of the vertices. The fixing number of a graph is the minimum number of vertices, when fixed, that fixes all of the vertices in the graph. Fixing numbers were first introduced by Laison and Gibbons, and independently by Erwin and Harary. Fixing numbers have also been referred to as determining numbers by Boutin. The main motivation is to remove all symmetries from a graph. A very simple application is in the creation of QR codes where the symbols must be fixed against any rotation. We determine the fixing number for several families of graphs, including those arising from combinatorial block designs. We also present several infinite families of graphs with an even stronger condition, where fixing any vertex in a graph fixes every vertex. 

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2. Maximum spread of graphs and bipartite graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1090/cams/14  

   Breen, Jane; Riasanovsky, Alex W.; Tait, Michael; Urschel, John (December 2022, Communications of the American Mathematical Society)

   Given any graph G G , the spread of G G is the maximum difference between any two eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of G G . In this paper, we resolve a pair of 20-year-old conjectures of Gregory, Hershkowitz, and Kirkland regarding the spread of graphs. The first states that for all positive integers n n , the n n -vertex graph G G that maximizes spread is the join of a clique and an independent set, with ⌊ 2 n / 3 ⌋ \lfloor 2n/3 \rfloor and ⌈ n / 3 ⌉ \lceil n/3 \rceil vertices, respectively. Using techniques from the theory of graph limits and numerical analysis, we prove this claim for all n n sufficiently large. As an intermediate step, we prove an analogous result for a family of operators in the Hilbert space over L 2 [ 0 , 1 ] \mathscr {L}^2[0,1] . The second conjecture claims that for any fixed m ≤ n 2 / 4 m \leq n^2/4 , if G G maximizes spread over all n n -vertex graphs with m m edges, then G G is bipartite. We prove an asymptotic version of this conjecture. Furthermore, we construct an infinite family of counterexamples, which shows that our asymptotic solution is tight up to lower-order error terms. 

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3. All Graphs with a Failed Zero Forcing Number of Two

   https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13112221  

   Gomez, Luis; Rubi, Karla; Terrazas, Jorden; Narayan, Darren A. (November 2021, Symmetry)

   Given a graph G, the zero forcing number of G, Z(G), is the smallest cardinality of any set S of vertices on which repeated applications of the forcing rule results in all vertices being in S. The forcing rule is: if a vertex v is in S, and exactly one neighbor u of v is not in S, then u is added to S in the next iteration. Zero forcing numbers have attracted great interest over the past 15 years and have been well studied. In this paper, we investigate the largest size of a set S that does not force all of the vertices in a graph to be in S. This quantity is known as the failed zero forcing number of a graph and will be denoted by F(G). We present new results involving this parameter. In particular, we completely characterize all graphs G where F(G)=2, solving a problem posed in 2015 by Fetcie, Jacob, and Saavedra. 

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4. Longest cycles in vertex‐transitive and highly connected graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1112/blms.70134  

   Groenland, Carla; Longbrake, Sean; Steiner, Raphael; Turcotte, Jérémie; Yepremyan, Liana (July 2025, Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society)

   Abstract We present progress on three old conjectures about longest paths and cycles in graphs. The first pair of conjectures, due to Lovász from 1969 and Thomassen from 1978, respectively, states that all connected vertex‐transitive graphs contain a Hamiltonian path, and that all sufficiently large such graphs even contain a Hamiltonian cycle. The third conjecture, due to Smith from 1984, states that for in every ‐connected graph any two longest cycles intersect in at least vertices. In this paper, we prove a new lemma about the intersection of longest cycles in a graph, which can be used to improve the best known bounds toward all the aforementioned conjectures: First, we show that every connected vertex‐transitive graph on vertices contains a cycle (and hence path) of length at least , improving on from DeVos [arXiv:2302:04255, 2023]. Second, we show that in every ‐connected graph with , any two longest cycles meet in at least vertices, improving on from Chen, Faudree, and Gould [J. Combin. Theory, Ser. B,72(1998) no. 1, 143–149]. Our proof combines combinatorial arguments, computer search, and linear programming. 

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5. Universal Geometric Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60440-0_14  

   Frati, Fabrizio; Hoffmann, Michael; Toth, Csaba D. (October 2020, Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG 2020))

   null (Ed.)

   We introduce and study the problem of constructing geometric graphs that have few vertices and edges and that are universal for planar graphs or for some sub-class of planar graphs; a geometric graph is universal for a class H of planar graphs if it contains an embedding, i.e., a crossing-free drawing, of every graph in H . Our main result is that there exists a geometric graph with n vertices and O(nlogn) edges that is universal for n-vertex forests; this extends to the geometric setting a well-known graph-theoretic result by Chung and Graham, which states that there exists an n-vertex graph with O(nlogn) edges that contains every n-vertex forest as a subgraph. Our O(nlogn) bound on the number of edges is asymptotically optimal. We also prove that, for every h>0 , every n-vertex convex geometric graph that is universal for the class of the n-vertex outerplanar graphs has Ωh(n2−1/h) edges; this almost matches the trivial O(n2) upper bound given by the n-vertex complete convex geometric graph. Finally, we prove that there is an n-vertex convex geometric graph with n vertices and O(nlogn) edges that is universal for n-vertex caterpillars. 

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