Chromatic roots are dense in the whole complex plane

I show that the zeros of the chromatic polynomials P-G(q) for the generalized theta graphs Theta((s.p)) are taken together, dense in the whole complex plane with the possible exception of the disc \q - l\ < l. The same holds for their dichromatic polynomials (alias Tutte polynomials, alias Potts-model partition functions) Z(G)(q,upsilon) outside the disc \q + upsilon\ < \upsilon\. An immediate corollary is that the chromatic roots of not-necessarily-planar graphs are dense in the whole complex plane. The main technical tool in the proof of these results is the Beraha-Kahane-Weiss theorem oil the limit sets of zeros for certain sequences of analytic functions, for which I give a new and simpler proof

Chromatic roots are dense in the whole complex plane

I show that the zeros of the chromatic polynomials P_G(q) for the generalized theta graphs \Theta^{(s,p)} are, taken together, dense in the whole complex plane with the possible exception of the disc |q-1| < 1. The same holds for their dichromatic polynomials (alias Tutte polynomials, alias Potts-model partition functions) Z_G(q,v) outside the disc |q+v| < |v|. An immediate corollary is that the chromatic zeros of not-necessarily-planar graphs are dense in the whole complex plane. The main technical tool in the proof of these results is the Beraha-Kahane-Weiss theorem on the limit sets of zeros for certain sequences of analytic functions, for which I give a new and simpler proof.Comment: LaTeX2e, 53 pages. Version 2 includes a new Appendix B. Version 3 adds a new Theorem 1.4 and a new Section 5, and makes several small improvements. To appear in Combinatorics, Probability & Computin

A Weighted Correlation Index for Rankings with Ties

Understanding the correlation between two different scores for the same set of items is a common problem in information retrieval, and the most commonly used statistics that quantifies this correlation is Kendall's $\tau$. However, the standard definition fails to capture that discordances between items with high rank are more important than those between items with low rank. Recently, a new measure of correlation based on average precision has been proposed to solve this problem, but like many alternative proposals in the literature it assumes that there are no ties in the scores. This is a major deficiency in a number of contexts, and in particular while comparing centrality scores on large graphs, as the obvious baseline, indegree, has a very large number of ties in web and social graphs. We propose to extend Kendall's definition in a natural way to take into account weights in the presence of ties. We prove a number of interesting mathematical properties of our generalization and describe an $O(n\log n)$ algorithm for its computation. We also validate the usefulness of our weighted measure of correlation using experimental data

Spectral reciprocity and matrix representations of unbounded operators

Motivated by potential theory on discrete spaces, we study a family of unbounded Hermitian operators in Hilbert space which generalize the usual graph-theoretic discrete Laplacian. These operators are discrete analogues of the classical conformal Laplacians and Hamiltonians from statistical mechanics. For an infinite discrete set $X$, we consider operators acting on Hilbert spaces of functions on $X$, and their representations as infinite matrices; the focus is on $\ell^2(X)$, and the energy space $\mathcal{H}_{\mathcal E}$. In particular, we prove that these operators are always essentially self-adjoint on $\ell^2(X)$, but may fail to be essentially self-adjoint on $\mathcal{H}_{\mathcal E}$. In the general case, we examine the von Neumann deficiency indices of these operators and explore their relevance in mathematical physics. Finally we study the spectra of the $\mathcal{H}_{\mathcal E}$ operators with the use of a new approximation scheme.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure. To appear: Journal of Functional Analysi

Graphs of bounded degree and the pp-harmonic boundary

Let $p$ be a real number greater than one and let $G$ be a connected graph of bounded degree. In this paper we introduce the $p$-harmonic boundary of $G$. We use this boundary to characterize the graphs $G$ for which the constant functions are the only $p$-harmonic functions on $G$. It is shown that any continuous function on the $p$-harmonic boundary of $G$ can be extended to a function that is $p$-harmonic on $G$. Some properties of this boundary that are preserved under rough-isometries are also given. Now let $\Gamma$ be a finitely generated group. As an application of our results we characterize the vanishing of the first reduced $\ell^p$-cohomology of $\Gamma$ in terms of the cardinality of its $p$-harmonic boundary. We also study the relationship between translation invariant linear functionals on a certain difference space of functions on $\Gamma$, the $p$-harmonic boundary of $\Gamma$ with the first reduced $\ell^p$-cohomology of $\Gamma$.Comment: Give a new proof for theorem 4.7. Change the style of the text in the first two section

Dirichlet to Neumann Maps for Infinite Quantum Graphs

The Dirichlet problem and Dirichlet to Neumann map are analyzed for elliptic equations on a large collection of infinite quantum graphs. For a dense set of continuous functions on the graph boundary, the Dirichlet to Neumann map has values in the Radon measures on the graph boundary