20 research outputs found
Homomorphism complexes, reconfiguration, and homotopy for directed graphs
The neighborhood complex of a graph was introduced by Lov\'asz to provide
topological lower bounds on chromatic number. More general homomorphism
complexes of graphs were further studied by Babson and Kozlov. Such `Hom
complexes' are also related to mixings of graph colorings and other
reconfiguration problems, as well as a notion of discrete homotopy for graphs.
Here we initiate the detailed study of Hom complexes for directed graphs
(digraphs). For any pair of digraphs graphs and , we consider the
polyhedral complex that parametrizes the directed graph
homomorphisms . Hom complexes of digraphs have applications
in the study of chains in graded posets and cellular resolutions of monomial
ideals. We study examples of directed Hom complexes and relate their
topological properties to certain graph operations including products,
adjunctions, and foldings. We introduce a notion of a neighborhood complex for
a digraph and prove that its homotopy type is recovered as the Hom complex of
homomorphisms from a directed edge. We establish a number of results regarding
the topology of directed neighborhood complexes, including the dependence on
directed bipartite subgraphs, a digraph version of the Mycielski construction,
as well as vanishing theorems for higher homology. The Hom complexes of
digraphs provide a natural framework for reconfiguration of homomorphisms of
digraphs. Inspired by notions of directed graph colorings we study the
connectivity of for a tournament. Finally, we use
paths in the internal hom objects of digraphs to define various notions of
homotopy, and discuss connections to the topology of Hom complexes.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures; V2: some changes in notation, clarified
statements and proofs, other corrections and minor revisions incorporating
comments from referee
Colorings of Hamming-Distance Graphs
Hamming-distance graphs arise naturally in the study of error-correcting codes and have been utilized by several authors to provide new proofs for (and in some cases improve) known bounds on the size of block codes. We study various standard graph properties of the Hamming-distance graphs with special emphasis placed on the chromatic number. A notion of robustness is defined for colorings of these graphs based on the tolerance of swapping colors along an edge without destroying the properness of the coloring, and a complete characterization of the maximally robust colorings is given for certain parameters. Additionally, explorations are made into subgraph structures whose identification may be useful in determining the chromatic number
Symmetry in Graph Theory
This book contains the successful invited submissions to a Special Issue of Symmetry on the subject of ""Graph Theory"". Although symmetry has always played an important role in Graph Theory, in recent years, this role has increased significantly in several branches of this field, including but not limited to Gromov hyperbolic graphs, the metric dimension of graphs, domination theory, and topological indices. This Special Issue includes contributions addressing new results on these topics, both from a theoretical and an applied point of view