Fractional colorings of cubic graphs with large girth

We show that every (sub)cubic n-vertex graph with sufficiently large girth has fractional chromatic number at most 2.2978 which implies that it contains an independent set of size at least 0.4352n. Our bound on the independence number is valid to random cubic graphs as well as it improves existing lower bounds on the maximum cut in cubic graphs with large girth

First order convergence of matroids

The model theory based notion of the first order convergence unifies the notions of the left-convergence for dense structures and the Benjamini-Schramm convergence for sparse structures. It is known that every first order convergent sequence of graphs with bounded tree-depth can be represented by an analytic limit object called a limit modeling. We establish the matroid counterpart of this result: every first order convergent sequence of matroids with bounded branch-depth representable over a fixed finite field has a limit modeling, i.e., there exists an infinite matroid with the elements forming a probability space that has asymptotically the same first order properties. We show that neither of the bounded branch-depth assumption nor the representability assumption can be removed.Comment: Accepted to the European Journal of Combinatoric

Cubic bridgeless graphs have more than a linear number of perfect matchings

International audienc

On computing the minimum 3-path vertex cover and dissociation number of graphs

The dissociation number of a graph G is the number of vertices in a maximum size induced subgraph of G with vertex degree at most 1. A k-path vertex cover of a graph G is a subset S of vertices of G such that every path of order k in G contains at least one vertex from S. The minimum 3-path vertex cover is a dual problem to the dissociation number. For this problem we present an exact algorithm with a running time of O ∗ (1.5171 n) on a graph with n vertices. We also provide a polynomial time randomized approximation algorithm with an for the minimum 3-path vertex cover. expected approximation ratio of 23/11 for th