English

A counterexample to the claw-free Schur-positivity conjecture

Combinatorics 2026-07-29 v1

Abstract

The claw-free Schur-positivity conjecture, recorded by Stanley (1998) and credited there to Gasharov, asserts that the chromatic symmetric function of every claw-free graph is Schur-positive. We give a counterexample on 12 vertices: the line graph GG of the graph obtained from a 4-cycle by attaching triangles at two opposite vertices and pendant edges at the other two satisfies [s(3,3,3,3)]XG=64[s_{(3,3,3,3)}]X_G = -64. The coefficient follows from a short computation by hand and is also reproduced by three exact implementations. An exhaustive computation over all 216,777 connected claw-free graphs on at most 11 vertices shows that every one is Schur-positive, so 12 vertices is the minimum order of any counterexample. A complete census of the 1,728,404 connected claw-free graphs on 12 vertices finds exactly two non-Schur-positive isomorphism classes; the other has graph6 code K?`CR@`bAbRB and coefficient [s(3,3,3,3)]=40[s_{(3,3,3,3)}] = -40.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.26364,
  title  = {A counterexample to the claw-free Schur-positivity conjecture},
  author = {Jitendra Prajapati},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.26364},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

4 pages. Verification code and exhaustive census data at https://github.com/infinityscroll/claw-free-schur-counterexample