On the imaginary parts of chromatic root

While much attention has been directed to the maximum modulus and maximum real part of chromatic roots of graphs of order $n$ (that is, with $n$ vertices), relatively little is known about the maximum imaginary part of such graphs. We prove that the maximum imaginary part can grow linearly in the order of the graph. We also show that for any fixed $p \in (0,1)$, almost every random graph $G$ in the Erd\"os-R\'enyi model has a non-real root.Comment: 4 figure

On the Roots of Chromatic Polynomials

AbstractIt is proved that the chromatic polynomial of a connected graph with n vertices and m edges has a root with modulus at least (m−1)/(n−2); this bound is best possible for trees and 2-trees (only). It is also proved that the chromatic polynomial of a graph with few triangles that is not a forest has a nonreal root and that there is a graph with n vertices whose chromatic polynomial has a root with imaginary part greater thann/4

On the Real Roots of Domination Polynomials

A dominating set $S$ of a graph $G$ of order $n$ is a subset of the vertices of $G$ such that every vertex is either in $S$ or adjacent to a vertex of $S$. The domination polynomial is defined by $D(G,x) = \sum d_k x^k$ where $d_k$ is the number of dominating sets in $G$ with cardinality $k$. In this paper we show that the closure of the real roots of domination polynomials is $(-\infty,0]$

On the Split Reliability of Graphs

A common model of robustness of a graph against random failures has all vertices operational, but the edges independently operational with probability $p$. One can ask for the probability that all vertices can communicate ({\em all-terminal reliability}) or that two specific vertices (or {\em terminals}) can communicate with each other ({\em two-terminal reliability}). A relatively new measure is {\em split reliability}, where for two fixed vertices $s$ and $t$, we consider the probability that every vertex communicates with one of $s$ or $t$, but not both. In this paper, we explore the existence for fixed numbers $n \geq 2$ and $m \geq n-1$ of an {\em optimal} connected $(n,m)$-graph $G_{n,m}$ for split reliability, that is, a connected graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges for which for any other such graph $H$, the split reliability of $G_{n,m}$ is at least as large as that of $H$, for {\em all} values of $p \in [0,1]$. Unlike the similar problems for all-terminal and two-terminal reliability, where only partial results are known, we completely solve the issue for split reliability, where we show that there is an optimal $(n,m)$-graph for split reliability if and only if $n\leq 3$, $m=n-1$, or $n=m=4$.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure