A note on the metric and edge metric dimensions of 2-connected graphs

For a given graph $G$, the metric and edge metric dimensions of $G$, $\dim(G)$ and ${\rm edim}(G)$, are the cardinalities of the smallest possible subsets of vertices in $V(G)$ such that they uniquely identify the vertices and the edges of $G$, respectively, by means of distances. It is already known that metric and edge metric dimensions are not in general comparable. Infinite families of graphs with pendant vertices in which the edge metric dimension is smaller than the metric dimension are already known. In this article, we construct a 2-connected graph $G$ such that $\dim(G)=a$ and ${\rm edim}(G)=b$ for every pair of integers $a,b$, where $4\le b<a$. For this we use subdivisions of complete graphs, whose metric dimension is in some cases smaller than the edge metric dimension. Along the way, we present an upper bound for the metric and edge metric dimensions of subdivision graphs under some special conditions.Comment: 12 page

Metric Dimension of Amalgamation of Graphs

A set of vertices $S$ resolves a graph $G$ if every vertex is uniquely determined by its vector of distances to the vertices in $S$. The metric dimension of $G$ is the minimum cardinality of a resolving set of $G$. Let $\{G_1, G_2, \ldots, G_n\}$ be a finite collection of graphs and each $G_i$ has a fixed vertex $v_{0_i}$ or a fixed edge $e_{0_i}$ called a terminal vertex or edge, respectively. The \emph{vertex-amalgamation} of $G_1, G_2, \ldots, G_n$, denoted by $Vertex-Amal\{G_i;v_{0_i}\}$, is formed by taking all the $G_i$'s and identifying their terminal vertices. Similarly, the \emph{edge-amalgamation} of $G_1, G_2, \ldots, G_n$, denoted by $Edge-Amal\{G_i;e_{0_i}\}$, is formed by taking all the $G_i$'s and identifying their terminal edges. Here we study the metric dimensions of vertex-amalgamation and edge-amalgamation for finite collection of arbitrary graphs. We give lower and upper bounds for the dimensions, show that the bounds are tight, and construct infinitely many graphs for each possible value between the bounds.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, Seventh Czech-Slovak International Symposium on Graph Theory, Combinatorics, Algorithms and Applications (CSGT2013), revised version 21 December 201

Monotone Maps, Sphericity and Bounded Second Eigenvalue

We consider {\em monotone} embeddings of a finite metric space into low dimensional normed space. That is, embeddings that respect the order among the distances in the original space. Our main interest is in embeddings into Euclidean spaces. We observe that any metric on $n$ points can be embedded into $l_2^n$, while, (in a sense to be made precise later), for almost every $n$-point metric space, every monotone map must be into a space of dimension $\Omega(n)$. It becomes natural, then, to seek explicit constructions of metric spaces that cannot be monotonically embedded into spaces of sublinear dimension. To this end, we employ known results on {\em sphericity} of graphs, which suggest one example of such a metric space - that defined by a complete bipartitegraph. We prove that an $\delta n$-regular graph of order $n$, with bounded diameter has sphericity $\Omega(n/(\lambda_2+1))$, where $\lambda_2$ is the second largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the graph, and 0 < \delta \leq \half is constant. We also show that while random graphs have linear sphericity, there are {\em quasi-random} graphs of logarithmic sphericity. For the above bound to be linear, $\lambda_2$ must be constant. We show that if the second eigenvalue of an $n/2$-regular graph is bounded by a constant, then the graph is close to being complete bipartite. Namely, its adjacency matrix differs from that of a complete bipartite graph in only $o(n^2)$ entries. Furthermore, for any 0 < \delta < \half, and $\lambda_2$, there are only finitely many $\delta n$-regular graphs with second eigenvalue at most $\lambda_2$