1,432 research outputs found
Extremal problems on shadows and hypercuts in simplicial complexes
Let be an -vertex forest. We say that an edge is in the
shadow of if contains a cycle. It is easy to see that if
is "almost a tree", that is, it has edges, then at least
edges are in its shadow and this is tight.
Equivalently, the largest number of edges an -vertex cut can have is
. These notions have natural analogs in higher
-dimensional simplicial complexes, graphs being the case . The results
in dimension turn out to be remarkably different from the case in graphs.
In particular the corresponding bounds depend on the underlying field of
coefficients. We find the (tight) analogous theorems for . We construct
-dimensional "-almost-hypertrees" (defined below) with an empty
shadow. We also show that the shadow of an "-almost-hypertree"
cannot be empty, and its least possible density is . In
addition we construct very large hyperforests with a shadow that is empty over
every field.
For even, we construct -dimensional -almost-hypertree whose shadow has density .
Finally, we mention several intriguing open questions
Fullerenes with the maximum Clar number
The Clar number of a fullerene is the maximum number of independent resonant
hexagons in the fullerene. It is known that the Clar number of a fullerene with
n vertices is bounded above by [n/6]-2. We find that there are no fullerenes
whose order n is congruent to 2 modulo 6 attaining this bound. In other words,
the Clar number for a fullerene whose order n is congruent to 2 modulo 6 is
bounded above by [n/6]-3. Moreover, we show that two experimentally produced
fullerenes C80:1 (D5d) and C80:2 (D2) attain this bound. Finally, we present a
graph-theoretical characterization for fullerenes, whose order n is congruent
to 2 (respectively, 4) modulo 6, achieving the maximum Clar number [n/6]-3
(respectively, [n/6]-2)
Phase transitions of extremal cuts for the configuration model
The -section width and the Max-Cut for the configuration model are shown
to exhibit phase transitions according to the values of certain parameters of
the asymptotic degree distribution. These transitions mirror those observed on
Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graphs, established by Luczak and McDiarmid (2001),
and Coppersmith et al. (2004), respectively
Optimal Bounds for the -cut Problem
In the -cut problem, we want to find the smallest set of edges whose
deletion breaks a given (multi)graph into connected components. Algorithms
of Karger & Stein and Thorup showed how to find such a minimum -cut in time
approximately . The best lower bounds come from conjectures about
the solvability of the -clique problem, and show that solving -cut is
likely to require time . Recent results of Gupta, Lee & Li have
given special-purpose algorithms that solve the problem in time , and ones that have better performance for special classes of graphs
(e.g., for small integer weights).
In this work, we resolve the problem for general graphs, by showing that the
Contraction Algorithm of Karger outputs any fixed -cut of weight with probability , where
denotes the minimum -cut size. This also gives an extremal bound of
on the number of minimum -cuts and an algorithm to compute a
minimum -cut in similar runtime. Both are tight up to lower-order factors,
with the algorithmic lower bound assuming hardness of max-weight -clique.
The first main ingredient in our result is a fine-grained analysis of how the
graph shrinks -- and how the average degree evolves -- in the Karger process.
The second ingredient is an extremal bound on the number of cuts of size less
than , using the Sunflower lemma.Comment: Final version of arXiv:1911.09165 with new and more general proof
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