Generalized centrality in trees

In 1982, Slater defined path subgraph analogues to the center, median, and (branch or branchweight) centroid of a tree. We define three families of central substructures of trees, including three types of central subtrees of degree at most D that yield the center, median, and centroid for D = 0 and Slater's path analogues for D = 2. We generalize these results concerning paths and include proofs that each type of generalized center and generalized centroid is unique. We also present algorithms for finding one or all generalized central substructures of each type.

On distinguishing trees by their chromatic symmetric functions

Let $T$ be an unrooted tree. The \emph{chromatic symmetric function} $X_T$, introduced by Stanley, is a sum of monomial symmetric functions corresponding to proper colorings of $T$. The \emph{subtree polynomial} $S_T$, first considered under a different name by Chaudhary and Gordon, is the bivariate generating function for subtrees of $T$ by their numbers of edges and leaves. We prove that $S_T =$, where $$ is the Hall inner product on symmetric functions and $\Phi$ is a certain symmetric function that does not depend on $T$. Thus the chromatic symmetric function is a stronger isomorphism invariant than the subtree polynomial. As a corollary, the path and degree sequences of a tree can be obtained from its chromatic symmetric function. As another application, we exhibit two infinite families of trees (\emph{spiders} and some \emph{caterpillars}), and one family of unicyclic graphs (\emph{squids}) whose members are determined completely by their chromatic symmetric functions.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures. Added references [2], [13], and [15

Generalized centrality in trees

In 1982, Slater defined path subgraph analogues to the center, median, and (branch or branchweight) centroid of a tree. We define three families of central substructures of trees, including three types of central subtrees of degree at most D that yield the center, median, and centroid for D = 0 and Slater's path analogues for D = 2. We generalize these results concerning paths and include proofs that each type of generalized center and generalized centroid is unique. We also present algorithms for finding one or all generalized central substructures of each type

4−Equitable Tree Labelings

We assign the labels {0,1,2,3} to the vertices of a graph; each edge is assigned the absolute difference of the incident vertices’ labels. For the labeling to be 4−equitable, we require the edge labels and vertex labels to each be distributed as uniformly as possible. We study 4−equitable labelings of different trees and prove all cater-pillars, symmetric generalized n−stars (or symmetric spiders), and complete n −ary trees for all n ∈ N are 4−equitable

On distinguishing trees by their chromatic symmetric functions

This is the author's accepted manuscript

Extremal Problems in Graph Saturation and Covering

This dissertation considers several problems in extremal graph theory with the aim of finding the maximum or minimum number of certain subgraph counts given local conditions. The local conditions of interest to us are saturation and covering. Given graphs F and H, a graph G is said to be F-saturated if it does not contain any copy of F, but the addition of any missing edge in G creates at least one copy of F. We say that G is H-covered if every vertex of G is contained in at least one copy of H. In the former setting, we prove results regarding the minimum number of copies of certain subgraphs, primarily cliques and stars. Special attention will be given to the somewhat surprising challenge of minimizing the number of cherries, i.e. stars with two vertices of degree 1, in triangle-saturated graphs and its connection to Moore graphs. In the latter setting, we are interested in maximizing the number of independent sets of a fixed size in H-covered graphs, primarily when H is a star, path, or disjoint union of edges. Along the way, we will introduce and prove several results regarding a new style of question regarding graph saturation, namely determining for which graphs F there exist trees that are F-saturated. We will call such graphs tree-saturating. Adviser: Jamie Radcliff

Antimagic Labeling for Unions of Graphs with Many Three-Paths

Let $G$ be a graph with $m$ edges and let $f$ be a bijection from $E(G)$ to $\{1,2, \dots, m\}$. For any vertex $v$, denote by $\phi_f(v)$ the sum of $f(e)$ over all edges $e$ incident to $v$. If $\phi_f(v) \neq \phi_f(u)$ holds for any two distinct vertices $u$ and $v$, then $f$ is called an {\it antimagic labeling} of $G$. We call $G$ {\it antimagic} if such a labeling exists. Hartsfield and Ringel in 1991 conjectured that all connected graphs except $P_2$ are antimagic. Denote the disjoint union of graphs $G$ and $H$ by $G \cup H$, and the disjoint union of $t$ copies of $G$ by $tG$. For an antimagic graph $G$ (connected or disconnected), we define the parameter $\tau(G)$ to be the maximum integer such that $G \cup tP_3$ is antimagic for all $t \leq \tau(G)$. Chang, Chen, Li, and Pan showed that for all antimagic graphs $G$, $\tau(G)$ is finite [Graphs and Combinatorics 37 (2021), 1065--1182]. Further, Shang, Lin, Liaw [Util. Math. 97 (2015), 373--385] and Li [Master Thesis, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan, 2019] found the exact value of $\tau(G)$ for special families of graphs: star forests and balanced double stars respectively. They did this by finding explicit antimagic labelings of $G\cup tP_3$ and proving a tight upper bound on $\tau(G)$ for these special families. In the present paper, we generalize their results by proving an upper bound on $\tau(G)$ for all graphs. For star forests and balanced double stars, this general bound is equivalent to the bounds given in \cite{star forest} and \cite{double star} and tight. In addition, we prove that the general bound is also tight for every other graph we have studied, including an infinite family of jellyfish graphs, cycles $C_n$ where $3 \leq n \leq 9$, and the double triangle $2C_3$