Facial achromatic number of triangulations on the sphere (Women in Mathematics)

A graph consists of a set of vertices and a set of edges. A coloring of a graph is an assigning of colors to the vertices such that any adjacent vertices receive different colors. In particular, a coloring is called complete if every pair of colors appear on some edge. In this talk, we expand complete colorings of graphs to those of graphs embedded on surfaces and consider such colorings of even triangulations on the sphere

Asymmetric 22-colorings of graphs

We show that the edges of every 3-connected planar graph except $K_4$ can be colored with two colors in such a way that the graph has no color preserving automorphisms. Also, we characterize all graphs which have the property that their edges can be $2$-colored so that no matter how the graph is embedded in any orientable surface, there is no homeomorphism of the surface which induces a non-trivial color preserving automorphism of the graph

Continuum spin foam model for 3d gravity

An example illustrating a continuum spin foam framework is presented. This covariant framework induces the kinematics of canonical loop quantization, and its dynamics is generated by a {\em renormalized} sum over colored polyhedra. Physically the example corresponds to 3d gravity with cosmological constant. Starting from a kinematical structure that accommodates local degrees of freedom and does not involve the choice of any background structure (e. g. triangulation), the dynamics reduces the field theory to have only global degrees of freedom. The result is {\em projectively} equivalent to the Turaev-Viro model.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Tutte's dichromate for signed graphs

We introduce the ``trivariate Tutte polynomial" of a signed graph as an invariant of signed graphs up to vertex switching that contains among its evaluations the number of proper colorings and the number of nowhere-zero flows. In this, it parallels the Tutte polynomial of a graph, which contains the chromatic polynomial and flow polynomial as specializations. The number of nowhere-zero tensions (for signed graphs they are not simply related to proper colorings as they are for graphs) is given in terms of evaluations of the trivariate Tutte polynomial at two distinct points. Interestingly, the bivariate dichromatic polynomial of a biased graph, shown by Zaslavsky to share many similar properties with the Tutte polynomial of a graph, does not in general yield the number of nowhere-zero flows of a signed graph. Therefore the ``dichromate" for signed graphs (our trivariate Tutte polynomial) differs from the dichromatic polynomial (the rank-size generating function). The trivariate Tutte polynomial of a signed graph can be extended to an invariant of ordered pairs of matroids on a common ground set -- for a signed graph, the cycle matroid of its underlying graph and its frame matroid form the relevant pair of matroids. This invariant is the canonically defined Tutte polynomial of matroid pairs on a common ground set in the sense of a recent paper of Krajewski, Moffatt and Tanasa, and was first studied by Welsh and Kayibi as a four-variable linking polynomial of a matroid pair on a common ground set.Comment: 53 pp. 9 figure

Minimal counterexamples and discharging method

Recently, the author found that there is a common mistake in some papers by using minimal counterexample and discharging method. We first discuss how the mistake is generated, and give a method to fix the mistake. As an illustration, we consider total coloring of planar or toroidal graphs, and show that: if $G$ is a planar or toroidal graph with maximum degree at most $\kappa - 1$, where $\kappa \geq 11$, then the total chromatic number is at most $\kappa$.Comment: 8 pages. Preliminary version, comments are welcom