Limited packings: related vertex partitions and duality issues

A $k$-limited packing partition ($k$LP partition) of a graph $G$ is a partition of $V(G)$ into $k$-limited packing sets. We consider the $k$LP partitions with minimum cardinality (with emphasis on $k=2$). The minimum cardinality is called $k$LP partition number of $G$ and denoted by $\chi_{\times k}(G)$. This problem is the dual problem of $k$-tuple domatic partitioning as well as a generalization of the well-studied $2$-distance coloring problem in graphs. We give the exact value of $\chi_{\times2}$ for trees and bound it for general graphs. A section of this paper is devoted to the dual of this problem, where we give a solution to an open problem posed in $1998$. We also revisit the total limited packing number in this paper and prove that the problem of computing this parameter is NP-hard even for some special families of graphs. We give some inequalities concerning this parameter and discuss the difference between $2$TLP number and $2$LP number with emphasis on trees

Boundary Partitions in Trees and Dimers

Given a finite planar graph, a grove is a spanning forest in which every component tree contains one or more of a specified set of vertices (called nodes) on the outer face. For the uniform measure on groves, we compute the probabilities of the different possible node connections in a grove. These probabilities only depend on boundary measurements of the graph and not on the actual graph structure, i.e., the probabilities can be expressed as functions of the pairwise electrical resistances between the nodes, or equivalently, as functions of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator (or response matrix) on the nodes. These formulae can be likened to generalizations (for spanning forests) of Cardy's percolation crossing probabilities, and generalize Kirchhoff's formula for the electrical resistance. Remarkably, when appropriately normalized, the connection probabilities are in fact integer-coefficient polynomials in the matrix entries, where the coefficients have a natural algebraic interpretation and can be computed combinatorially. A similar phenomenon holds in the so-called double-dimer model: connection probabilities of boundary nodes are polynomial functions of certain boundary measurements, and as formal polynomials, they are specializations of the grove polynomials. Upon taking scaling limits, we show that the double-dimer connection probabilities coincide with those of the contour lines in the Gaussian free field with certain natural boundary conditions. These results have direct application to connection probabilities for multiple-strand SLE_2, SLE_8, and SLE_4.Comment: 46 pages, 12 figures. v4 has additional diagrams and other minor change