Tutte uniqueness of locally grid graphs

A graph is said to be locally grid if the structure around each of its vertices is a 3 × 3 grid. As a follow up of the research initiated in [4] and [3] we prove that most locally grid graphs are uniquely determined by their Tutte polynomial.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología BFM2001-2474-ORIJunta de Andalucía PAI FQM-16

Hexagonal Tilings: Tutte Uniqueness

We develop the necessary machinery in order to prove that hexagonal tilings are uniquely determined by their Tutte polynomial, showing as an example how to apply this technique to the toroidal hexagonal tiling.Comment: 12 figure

Hexagonal Tilings and Locally C6 Graphs

We give a complete classification of hexagonal tilings and locally C6 graphs, by showing that each of them has a natural embedding in the torus or in the Klein bottle. We also show that locally grid graphs are minors of hexagonal tilings (and by duality of locally C6 graphs) by contraction of a perfect matching and deletion of the resulting parallel edges, in a form suitable for the study of their Tutte uniqueness.Comment: 14 figure

Distinguishing graphs by their left and right homomorphism profiles

We introduce a new property of graphs called ‘q-state Potts unique-ness’ and relate it to chromatic and Tutte uniqueness, and also to ‘chromatic–flow uniqueness’, recently studied by Duan, Wu and Yu. We establish for which edge-weighted graphs H homomor-phism functions from multigraphs G to H are specializations of the Tutte polynomial of G, in particular answering a question of Freed-man, Lovász and Schrijver. We also determine for which edge-weighted graphs H homomorphism functions from multigraphs G to H are specializations of the ‘edge elimination polynomial’ of Averbouch, Godlin and Makowsky and the ‘induced subgraph poly-nomial’ of Tittmann, Averbouch and Makowsky. Unifying the study of these and related problems is the notion of the left and right homomorphism profiles of a graph.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia MTM2008-05866-C03-01Junta de Andalucía FQM- 0164Junta de Andalucía P06-FQM-0164

Locally grid graphs: classification and Tutte uniqueness

We define a locally grid graph as a graph in which the structure around each vertex is a 3×3 grid ⊞, the canonical examples being the toroidal grids Cp×Cq. The paper contains two main results. First, we give a complete classification of locally grid graphs, showing that each of them has a natural embedding in the torus or in the Klein bottle. Secondly, as a continuation of the research initiated in (On graphs determined by their Tutte polynomials, Graphs Combin., to appear), we prove that Cp×Cq is uniquely determined by its Tutte polynomial, for p,q⩾6

Graphs determined by polynomial invariants

AbstractMany polynomials have been defined associated to graphs, like the characteristic, matchings, chromatic and Tutte polynomials. Besides their intrinsic interest, they encode useful combinatorial information about the given graph. It is natural then to ask to what extent any of these polynomials determines a graph and, in particular, whether one can find graphs that can be uniquely determined by a given polynomial. In this paper we survey known results in this area and, at the same time, we present some new results

Homomorphisms and polynomial invariants of graphs

This paper initiates a general study of the connection between graph homomorphisms and the Tutte polynomial. This connection can be extended to other polynomial invariants of graphs related to the Tutte polynomial such as the transition, the circuit partition, the boundary, and the coboundary polynomials. As an application, we describe in terms of homomorphism counting some fundamental evaluations of the Tutte polynomial in abelian groups and statistical physics. We conclude the paper by providing a homomorphism view of the uniqueness conjectures formulated by Bollobás, Pebody and Riordan.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia MTM2005-08441-C02-01Junta de Andalucía PAI-FQM-0164Junta de Andalucía P06-FQM-0164

On Tutte polynomial uniqueness of twisted wheels

AbstractA graph G is called T-unique if any other graph having the same Tutte polynomial as G is isomorphic to G. Recently, there has been much interest in determining T-unique graphs and matroids. For example, de Mier and Noy [A. de Mier, M. Noy, On graphs determined by their Tutte polynomials, Graphs Combin. 20 (2004) 105–119; A. de Mier, M. Noy, Tutte uniqueness of line graphs, Discrete Math. 301 (2005) 57–65] showed that wheels, ladders, Möbius ladders, square of cycles, hypercubes, and certain class of line graphs are all T-unique. In this paper, we prove that the twisted wheels are also T-unique

Shortest path embeddings of graphs on surfaces

The classical theorem of F\'{a}ry states that every planar graph can be represented by an embedding in which every edge is represented by a straight line segment. We consider generalizations of F\'{a}ry's theorem to surfaces equipped with Riemannian metrics. In this setting, we require that every edge is drawn as a shortest path between its two endpoints and we call an embedding with this property a shortest path embedding. The main question addressed in this paper is whether given a closed surface S, there exists a Riemannian metric for which every topologically embeddable graph admits a shortest path embedding. This question is also motivated by various problems regarding crossing numbers on surfaces. We observe that the round metrics on the sphere and the projective plane have this property. We provide flat metrics on the torus and the Klein bottle which also have this property. Then we show that for the unit square flat metric on the Klein bottle there exists a graph without shortest path embeddings. We show, moreover, that for large g, there exist graphs G embeddable into the orientable surface of genus g, such that with large probability a random hyperbolic metric does not admit a shortest path embedding of G, where the probability measure is proportional to the Weil-Petersson volume on moduli space. Finally, we construct a hyperbolic metric on every orientable surface S of genus g, such that every graph embeddable into S can be embedded so that every edge is a concatenation of at most O(g) shortest paths.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures: Version 3 is updated after comments of reviewer