Spanning Trails and Spanning Trees

There are two major parts in my dissertation. One is based on spanning trail, the other one is comparing spanning tree packing and covering.;The results of the spanning trail in my dissertation are motivated by Thomassen\u27s Conjecture that every 4-connected line graph is hamiltonian. Harary and Nash-Williams showed that the line graph L( G) is hamiltonian if and only if the graph G has a dominating eulerian subgraph. Also, motivated by the Chinese Postman Problem, Boesch et al. introduced supereulerian graphs which contain spanning closed trails. In the spanning trail part of my dissertation, I proved some results based on supereulerian graphs and, a more general case, spanning trails.;Let alpha(G), alpha\u27(G), kappa( G) and kappa\u27(G) denote the independence number, the matching number, connectivity and edge connectivity of a graph G, respectively. First, we discuss the 3-edge-connected graphs with bounded edge-cuts of size 3, and prove that any 3-edge-connected graph with at most 11 edge cuts of size 3 is supereulerian, which improves Catlin\u27s result. Second, having the idea from Chvatal-Erdos Theorem which states that every graph G with kappa(G) ≥ alpha( G) is hamiltonian, we find families of finite graphs F 1 and F2 such that if a connected graph G satisfies kappa\u27(G) ≥ alpha(G) -- 1 (resp. kappa\u27(G) ≥ 3 and alpha\u27( G) ≤ 7), then G has a spanning closed trail if and only if G is not contractible to a member of F1 (resp. F2). Third, by solving a conjecture posed in [Discrete Math. 306 (2006) 87-98], we prove if G is essentially 4-edge-connected, then for any edge subset X0 ⊆ E(G) with |X0| ≤ 3 and any distinct edges e, e\u27 2 ∈ E(G), G has a spanning ( e, e\u27)-trail containing all edges in X0.;The results on spanning trees in my dissertation concern spanning tree packing and covering. We find a characterization of spanning tree packing and covering based on degree sequence. Let tau(G) be the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees in G, a(G) be the minimum number of spanning trees whose union covers E(G). We prove that, given a graphic sequence d = (d1, d2···dn) (d1 ≥ d2 ≥···≥ dn) and integers k2 ≥ k1 \u3e 0, there exists a simple graph G with degree sequence d satisfying k 1 ≤ tau(G) ≤ a(G) ≤ k2 if and only if dn ≥ k1 and 2k1(n -- 1) ≤ Sigmani =1 di ≤ 2k2( n -- 1 |I| -- 1) + 2Sigma i∈I di, where I = {lcub}i : di \u3c k2{rcub}

Minimum Crossing Problems on Graphs

This thesis will address several problems in discrete optimization. These problems are considered hard to solve. However, good approximation algorithms for these problems may be helpful in approximating problems in computational biology and computer science. Given an undirected graph G=(V,E) and a family of subsets of vertices S, the minimum crossing spanning tree is a spanning tree where the maximum number of edges crossing any single set in S is minimized, where an edge crosses a set if it has exactly one endpoint in the set. This thesis will present two algorithms for special cases of minimum crossing spanning trees. The first algorithm is for the case where the sets of S are pairwise disjoint. It gives a spanning tree with the maximum crossing of a set being 2OPT+2, where OPT is the maximum crossing for a minimum crossing spanning tree. The second algorithm is for the case where the sets of S form a laminar family. Let b_i be a bound for each S_i in S. If there exists a spanning tree where each set S_i is crossed at most b_i times, the algorithm finds a spanning tree where each set S_i is crossed O(b_i log n) times. From this algorithm, one can get a spanning tree with maximum crossing O(OPT log n). Given an undirected graph G=(V,E), and a family of subsets of vertices S, the minimum crossing perfect matching is a perfect matching where the maximum number of edges crossing any set in S is minimized. A proof will be presented showing that finding a minimum crossing perfect matching is NP-hard, even when the graph is bipartite and the sets of S are pairwise disjoint

Spanning trees of 3-uniform hypergraphs

Masbaum and Vaintrob's "Pfaffian matrix tree theorem" implies that counting spanning trees of a 3-uniform hypergraph (abbreviated to 3-graph) can be done in polynomial time for a class of "3-Pfaffian" 3-graphs, comparable to and related to the class of Pfaffian graphs. We prove a complexity result for recognizing a 3-Pfaffian 3-graph and describe two large classes of 3-Pfaffian 3-graphs -- one of these is given by a forbidden subgraph characterization analogous to Little's for bipartite Pfaffian graphs, and the other consists of a class of partial Steiner triple systems for which the property of being 3-Pfaffian can be reduced to the property of an associated graph being Pfaffian. We exhibit an infinite set of partial Steiner triple systems that are not 3-Pfaffian, none of which can be reduced to any other by deletion or contraction of triples. We also find some necessary or sufficient conditions for the existence of a spanning tree of a 3-graph (much more succinct than can be obtained by the currently fastest polynomial-time algorithm of Gabow and Stallmann for finding a spanning tree) and a superexponential lower bound on the number of spanning trees of a Steiner triple system.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figure

Trees and Matchings

In this article, Temperley's bijection between spanning trees of the square grid on the one hand, and perfect matchings (also known as dimer coverings) of the square grid on the other, is extended to the setting of general planar directed (and undirected) graphs, where edges carry nonnegative weights that induce a weighting on the set of spanning trees. We show that the weighted, directed spanning trees (often called arborescences) of any planar graph G can be put into a one-to-one weight-preserving correspondence with the perfect matchings of a related planar graph H. One special case of this result is a bijection between perfect matchings of the hexagonal honeycomb lattice and directed spanning trees of a triangular lattice. Another special case gives a correspondence between perfect matchings of the ``square-octagon'' lattice and directed weighted spanning trees on a directed weighted version of the cartesian lattice. In conjunction with results of Kenyon, our main theorem allows us to compute the measures of all cylinder events for random spanning trees on any (directed, weighted) planar graph. Conversely, in cases where the perfect matching model arises from a tree model, Wilson's algorithm allows us to quickly generate random samples of perfect matchings.Comment: 32 pages, 19 figures (minor revisions from version 1

Critical Ising model and spanning trees partition functions

We prove that the squared partition function of the two-dimensional critical Ising model defined on a finite, isoradial graph $G=(V,E)$, is equal to $2^{|V|}$ times the partition function of spanning trees of the graph $\bar{G}$, where $\bar{G}$ is the graph $G$ extended along the boundary; edges of $G$ are assigned Kenyon's [Ken02] critical weights, and boundary edges of $\bar{G}$ have specific weights. The proof is an explicit construction, providing a new relation on the level of configurations between two classical, critical models of statistical mechanics.Comment: 38 pages, 26 figure