English

A counterexample to the reconstruction conjecture for locally finite trees

Combinatorics 2018-01-19 v2

Abstract

Two graphs GG and HH are hypomorphic if there exists a bijection φ ⁣:V(G)V(H)\varphi \colon V(G) \rightarrow V(H) such that GvHφ(v)G - v \cong H - \varphi(v) for each vV(G)v \in V(G). A graph GG is reconstructible if HGH \cong G for all HH hypomorphic to GG. It is well known that not all infinite graphs are reconstructible. However, the Harary-Schwenk-Scott Conjecture from 1972 suggests that all locally finite trees are reconstructible. In this paper, we construct a counterexample to the Harary-Schwenk-Scott Conjecture. Our example also answers four other questions of Nash-Williams, Halin and Andreae on the reconstruction of infinite graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.02926,
  title  = {A counterexample to the reconstruction conjecture for locally finite trees},
  author = {Nathan Bowler and Joshua Erde and Peter Heinig and Florian Lehner and Max Pitz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.02926},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

19 pages, Colour figures