skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Degree of h-polynomials of edge ideals
Abstract In this paper, we investigate the degree ofh-polynomials of edge ideals of finite simple graphs. In particular, we provide combinatorial formulas for the degree of theh-polynomial for various fundamental classes of graphs such as paths, cycles, and bipartite graphs. To the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first investigation into the combinatorial interpretation of this algebraic invariant. Additionally, we characterize all connected graphs in which the sum of the Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity and the degree of theh-polynomial of an edge ideal achieve its maximum value, equal to the number of vertices in the graph.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2418805
PAR ID:
10630902
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Springer Science + Business Media
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics
Volume:
62
Issue:
1
ISSN:
0925-9899
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. An edge‐ordered graph is a graph with a linear ordering of its edges. Two edge‐ordered graphs areequivalentif there is an isomorphism between them preserving the edge‐ordering. Theedge‐ordered Ramsey number redge(H; q) of an edge‐ordered graphHis the smallestNsuch that there exists an edge‐ordered graphGonNvertices such that, for everyq‐coloring of the edges ofG, there is a monochromatic subgraph ofGequivalent toH. Recently, Balko and Vizer proved thatredge(H; q) exists, but their proof gave enormous upper bounds on these numbers. We give a new proof with a much better bound, showing there exists a constantcsuch thatfor every edge‐ordered graphHonnvertices. We also prove a polynomial bound for the edge‐ordered Ramsey number of graphs of bounded degeneracy. Finally, we prove a strengthening for graphs where every edge has a label and the labels do not necessarily have an ordering. 
    more » « less
  2. Generalized splines are an algebraic combinatorial framework that generalizes and unifies various established concepts across different fields, most notably the classical notion of splines and the topological notion of GKM theory. The former consists of piecewise polynomials on a combinatorial geometric object like a polytope, whose polynomial pieces agree to a specified degree of differentiability. The latter is a graph-theoretic construction of torus-equivariant cohomology that Shareshian and Wachs used to reformulate the well-known Stanley-Stembridge conjecture, a reformulation that was recently proven to hold by Brosnan and Chow and independently Guay-Paquet. This paper focuses on the theory of generalized splines. A generalized spline on a graph $$G$$ with each edge labeled by an ideal in a ring $$R$$ consists of a vertex-labeling by elements of $$R$$ so that the labels on adjacent vertices $u, v$ differ by an element of the ideal associated to the edge $uv$. We study the $$R$$-module of generalized splines and produce minimum generating sets for several families of graphs and edge-labelings: $1)$ for all graphs when the set of possible edge-labelings consists of at most two finitely-generated ideals, and $2)$ for cycles when the set of possible edge-labelings consists of principal ideals generated by elements of the form $(ax+by)^2$ in the polynomial ring $$\mathbb{C}[x,y]$$. We obtain the generators using a constructive algorithm that is suitable for computer implementation and give several applications, including contextualizing several results in the theory of classical (analytic) splines. 
    more » « less
  3. We study the problem of approximating the value of the matching polynomial on graphs with edge parameter γ, where γ takes arbitrary values in the complex plane. When γ is a positive real, Jerrum and Sinclair showed that the problem admits an FPRAS on general graphs. For general complex values of γ, Patel and Regts, building on methods developed by Barvinok, showed that the problem admits an FPTAS on graphs of maximum degree Δ as long as γ is not a negative real number less than or equal to −1/(4(Δ −1)). Our first main result completes the picture for the approximability of the matching polynomial on bounded degree graphs. We show that for all Δ ≥ 3 and all real γ less than −1/(4(Δ −1)), the problem of approximating the value of the matching polynomial on graphs of maximum degree Δ with edge parameter γ is #P-hard. We then explore whether the maximum degree parameter can be replaced by the connective constant. Sinclair et al. showed that for positive real γ, it is possible to approximate the value of the matching polynomial using a correlation decay algorithm on graphs with bounded connective constant (and potentially unbounded maximum degree). We first show that this result does not extend in general in the complex plane; in particular, the problem is #P-hard on graphs with bounded connective constant for a dense set of γ values on the negative real axis. Nevertheless, we show that the result does extend for any complex value γ that does not lie on the negative real axis. Our analysis accounts for complex values of γ using geodesic distances in the complex plane in the metric defined by an appropriate density function. 
    more » « less
  4. For graphs G and H, we say that G is H-free if it does not contain H as an induced subgraph. Already in the early 1980s Alekseev observed that if H is connected, then the Max Weight Independent Set problem (MWIS) remains NP-hard in H-free graphs, unless H is a path or a subdivided claw, i.e., a graph obtained from the three-leaf star by subdividing each edge some number of times (possibly zero). Since then determining the complexity of MWIS in these remaining cases is one of the most important problems in algorithmic graph theory. A general belief is that the problem is polynomial-time solvable, which is witnessed by algorithmic results for graphs excluding some small paths or subdivided claws. A more conclusive evidence was given by the recent breakthrough result by Gartland and Lokshtanov [FOCS 2020]: They proved that MWIS can be solved in quasipolynomial time in H-free graphs, where H is any fixed path. If H is an arbitrary subdivided claw, we know much less: The problem admits a QPTAS and a subexponential-time algorithm [Chudnovsky et al., SODA 2019]. In this paper we make an important step towards solving the problem by showing that for any subdivided claw H, MWIS is polynomial-time solvable in H-free graphs of bounded degree. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract Given a graph of degree over vertices, we consider the problem of computing a near maximum cut or a near minimum bisection in polynomial time. For graphs of girth , we develop a local message passing algorithm whose complexity is , and that achieves near optimal cut values among all ‐local algorithms. Focusing on max‐cut, the algorithm constructs a cut of value , where is the value of the Parisi formula from spin glass theory, and (subscripts indicate the asymptotic variables). Our result generalizes to locally treelike graphs, that is, graphs whose girth becomes after removing a small fraction of vertices. Earlier work established that, for random ‐regular graphs, the typical max‐cut value is . Therefore our algorithm is nearly optimal on such graphs. An immediate corollary of this result is that random regular graphs have nearly minimum max‐cut, and nearly maximum min‐bisection among all regular locally treelike graphs. This can be viewed as a combinatorial version of the near‐Ramanujan property of random regular graphs. 
    more » « less