Pseudo-random graphs

Random graphs have proven to be one of the most important and fruitful concepts in modern Combinatorics and Theoretical Computer Science. Besides being a fascinating study subject for their own sake, they serve as essential instruments in proving an enormous number of combinatorial statements, making their role quite hard to overestimate. Their tremendous success serves as a natural motivation for the following very general and deep informal questions: what are the essential properties of random graphs? How can one tell when a given graph behaves like a random graph? How to create deterministically graphs that look random-like? This leads us to a concept of pseudo-random graphs and the aim of this survey is to provide a systematic treatment of this concept.Comment: 50 page

Embedding large subgraphs into dense graphs

What conditions ensure that a graph G contains some given spanning subgraph H? The most famous examples of results of this kind are probably Dirac's theorem on Hamilton cycles and Tutte's theorem on perfect matchings. Perfect matchings are generalized by perfect F-packings, where instead of covering all the vertices of G by disjoint edges, we want to cover G by disjoint copies of a (small) graph F. It is unlikely that there is a characterization of all graphs G which contain a perfect F-packing, so as in the case of Dirac's theorem it makes sense to study conditions on the minimum degree of G which guarantee a perfect F-packing. The Regularity lemma of Szemeredi and the Blow-up lemma of Komlos, Sarkozy and Szemeredi have proved to be powerful tools in attacking such problems and quite recently, several long-standing problems and conjectures in the area have been solved using these. In this survey, we give an outline of recent progress (with our main emphasis on F-packings, Hamiltonicity problems and tree embeddings) and describe some of the methods involved

End Graph Effects on Chromatic Polynomials for Strip Graphs of Lattices and their Asymptotic Limits

We report exact calculations of the ground state degeneracy per site (exponent of the ground state entropy) $W(\{G\},q)$ of the $q$-state Potts antiferromagnet on infinitely long strips with specified end graphs for free boundary conditions in the longitudinal direction and free and periodic boundary conditions in the transverse direction. This is equivalent to calculating the chromatic polynomials and their asymptotic limits for these graphs. Making the generalization from $q \in {\mathbb Z}_+$ to $q \in {\mathbb C}$, we determine the full locus ${\cal B}$ on which $W$ is nonanalytic in the complex $q$ plane. We report the first example for this class of strip graphs in which ${\cal B}$ encloses regions even for planar end graphs. The bulk of the specific strip graph that exhibits this property is a part of the $(3^3 \cdot 4^2)$ Archimedean lattice.Comment: 27 pages, Revtex, 11 encapsulated postscript figures, Physica A, in pres