Six signed Petersen graphs, and their automorphisms

Up to switching isomorphism there are six ways to put signs on the edges of the Petersen graph. We prove this by computing switching invariants, especially frustration indices and frustration numbers, switching automorphism groups, chromatic numbers, and numbers of proper 1-colorations, thereby illustrating some of the ideas and methods of signed graph theory. We also calculate automorphism groups and clusterability indices, which are not invariant under switching. In the process we develop new properties of signed graphs, especially of their switching automorphism groups.Comment: 39 pp., 7 fi

Totally frustrated states in the chromatic theory of gain graphs

We generalize proper coloring of gain graphs to totally frustrated states, where each vertex takes a value in a set of `qualities' or `spins' that is permuted by the gain group. (An example is the Potts model.) The number of totally frustrated states satisfies the usual deletion-contraction law but is matroidal only for standard coloring, where the group action is trivial or nearly regular. One can generalize chromatic polynomials by constructing spin sets with repeated transitive components.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

Lattice Points in Orthotopes and a Huge Polynomial Tutte Invariant of Weighted Gain Graphs

A gain graph is a graph whose edges are orientably labelled from a group. A weighted gain graph is a gain graph with vertex weights from an abelian semigroup, where the gain group is lattice ordered and acts on the weight semigroup. For weighted gain graphs we establish basic properties and we present general dichromatic and forest-expansion polynomials that are Tutte invariants (they satisfy Tutte's deletion-contraction and multiplicative identities). Our dichromatic polynomial includes the classical graph one by Tutte, Zaslavsky's two for gain graphs, Noble and Welsh's for graphs with positive integer weights, and that of rooted integral gain graphs by Forge and Zaslavsky. It is not a universal Tutte invariant of weighted gain graphs; that remains to be found. An evaluation of one example of our polynomial counts proper list colorations of the gain graph from a color set with a gain-group action. When the gain group is Z^d, the lists are order ideals in the integer lattice Z^d, and there are specified upper bounds on the colors, then there is a formula for the number of bounded proper colorations that is a piecewise polynomial function of the upper bounds, of degree nd where n is the order of the graph. This example leads to graph-theoretical formulas for the number of integer lattice points in an orthotope but outside a finite number of affinographic hyperplanes, and for the number of n x d integral matrices that lie between two specified matrices but not in any of certain subspaces defined by simple row equations.Comment: 32 pp. Submitted in 2007, extensive revisions in 2013 (!). V3: Added references, clarified examples. 35 p