Riemann-Roch and Abel-Jacobi theory on a finite graph

It is well-known that a finite graph can be viewed, in many respects, as a discrete analogue of a Riemann surface. In this paper, we pursue this analogy further in the context of linear equivalence of divisors. In particular, we formulate and prove a graph-theoretic analogue of the classical Riemann-Roch theorem. We also prove several results, analogous to classical facts about Riemann surfaces, concerning the Abel-Jacobi map from a graph to its Jacobian. As an application of our results, we characterize the existence or non-existence of a winning strategy for a certain chip-firing game played on the vertices of a graph.Comment: 35 pages. v3: Several minor changes made, mostly fixing typographical errors. This is the final version, to appear in Adv. Mat

Rank of divisors on tropical curves

We investigate, using purely combinatorial methods, structural and algorithmic properties of linear equivalence classes of divisors on tropical curves. In particular, we confirm a conjecture of Baker asserting that the rank of a divisor D on a (non-metric) graph is equal to the rank of D on the corresponding metric graph, and construct an algorithm for computing the rank of a divisor on a tropical curve

Generating bricks

AbstractA brick is a 3-connected graph such that the graph obtained from it by deleting any two distinct vertices has a perfect matching. The importance of bricks stems from the fact that they are building blocks of the matching decomposition procedure of Kotzig, and Lovász and Plummer. We prove a “splitter theorem” for bricks. More precisely, we show that if a brick H is a “matching minor” of a brick G, then, except for a few well-described exceptions, a graph isomorphic to H can be obtained from G by repeatedly applying a certain operation in such a way that all the intermediate graphs are bricks and have no parallel edges. The operation is as follows: first delete an edge, and for every vertex of degree two that results contract both edges incident with it. This strengthens a recent result of de Carvalho, Lucchesi and Murty

On 22-cycles of graphs

Let $G=(V,E)$ be a finite undirected graph. Orient the edges of $G$ in an arbitrary way. A $2$-cycle on $G$ is a function $d : E^2\to \mathbb{Z}$ such for each edge $e$, $d(e, \cdot)$ and $d(\cdot, e)$ are circulations on $G$, and $d(e, f) = 0$ whenever $e$ and $f$ have a common vertex. We show that each $2$-cycle is a sum of three special types of $2$-cycles: cycle-pair $2$-cycles, Kuratowski $2$-cycles, and quad $2$-cycles. In case that the graph is Kuratowski connected, we show that each $2$-cycle is a sum of cycle-pair $2$-cycles and at most one Kuratowski $2$-cycle. Furthermore, if $G$ is Kuratowski connected, we characterize when every Kuratowski $2$-cycle is a sum of cycle-pair $2$-cycles. A $2$-cycles $d$ on $G$ is skew-symmetric if $d(e,f) = -d(f,e)$ for all edges $e,f\in E$. We show that each $2$-cycle is a sum of two special types of skew-symmetric $2$-cycles: skew-symmetric cycle-pair $2$-cycles and skew-symmetric quad $2$-cycles. In case that the graph is Kuratowski connected, we show that each skew-symmetric $2$-cycle is a sum of skew-symmetric cycle-pair $2$-cycles. Similar results like this had previously been obtained by one of the authors for symmetric $2$-cycles. Symmetric $2$-cycles are $2$-cycles $d$ such that $d(e,f)=d(f,e)$ for all edges $e,f\in E$