2,288 research outputs found
Ramsey-nice families of graphs
For a finite family of fixed graphs let be
the smallest integer for which every -coloring of the edges of the
complete graph yields a monochromatic copy of some . We
say that is -nice if for every graph with
and for every -coloring of there exists a
monochromatic copy of some . It is easy to see that if
contains no forest, then it is not -nice for any . It seems
plausible to conjecture that a (weak) converse holds, namely, for any finite
family of graphs that contains at least one forest, and for all
(or at least for infinitely many values of ),
is -nice. We prove several (modest) results in support of this
conjecture, showing, in particular, that it holds for each of the three
families consisting of two connected graphs with 3 edges each and observing
that it holds for any family containing a forest with at most 2
edges. We also study some related problems and disprove a conjecture by
Aharoni, Charbit and Howard regarding the size of matchings in regular
3-partite 3-uniform hypergraphs.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure
Is the five-flow conjecture almost false?
The number of nowhere zero Z_Q flows on a graph G can be shown to be a
polynomial in Q, defining the flow polynomial \Phi_G(Q). According to Tutte's
five-flow conjecture, \Phi_G(5) > 0 for any bridgeless G.A conjecture by Welsh
that \Phi_G(Q) has no real roots for Q \in (4,\infty) was recently disproved by
Haggard, Pearce and Royle. These authors conjectured the absence of roots for Q
\in [5,\infty). We study the real roots of \Phi_G(Q) for a family of non-planar
cubic graphs known as generalised Petersen graphs G(m,k). We show that the
modified conjecture on real flow roots is also false, by exhibiting infinitely
many real flow roots Q>5 within the class G(nk,k). In particular, we compute
explicitly the flow polynomial of G(119,7), showing that it has real roots at
Q\approx 5.0000197675 and Q\approx 5.1653424423. We moreover prove that the
graph families G(6n,6) and G(7n,7) possess real flow roots that accumulate at
Q=5 as n\to\infty (in the latter case from above and below); and that
Q_c(7)\approx 5.2352605291 is an accumulation point of real zeros of the flow
polynomials for G(7n,7) as n\to\infty.Comment: 44 pages (LaTeX2e). Includes tex file, three sty files, and a
mathematica script polyG119_7.m. Many improvements from version 3, in
particular Sections 3 and 4 have been mostly re-writen, and Sections 7 and 8
have been eliminated. (This material can now be found in arXiv:1303.5210.)
Final version published in J. Combin. Theory
Anagram-free Graph Colouring
An anagram is a word of the form where is a non-empty word and
is a permutation of . We study anagram-free graph colouring and give bounds
on the chromatic number. Alon et al. (2002) asked whether anagram-free
chromatic number is bounded by a function of the maximum degree. We answer this
question in the negative by constructing graphs with maximum degree 3 and
unbounded anagram-free chromatic number. We also prove upper and lower bounds
on the anagram-free chromatic number of trees in terms of their radius and
pathwidth. Finally, we explore extensions to edge colouring and
-anagram-free colouring.Comment: Version 2: Changed 'abelian square' to 'anagram' for consistency with
'Anagram-free colourings of graphs' by Kam\v{c}ev, {\L}uczak, and Sudakov.
Minor changes based on referee feedbac
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