English

A graph minors characterization of signed graphs whose signed Colin de Verdi\`ere parameter $\nu$ is two

Combinatorics 2012-09-21 v1

Abstract

A signed graph is a pair (G,Σ)(G,\Sigma), where G=(V,E)G=(V,E) is a graph (in which parallel edges are permitted, but loops are not) with V={1,...,n}V=\{1,...,n\} and ΣE\Sigma\subseteq E. The edges in Σ\Sigma are called odd and the other edges even. By S(G,Σ)S(G,\Sigma) we denote the set of all symmetric n×nn\times n matrices A=[ai,j]A=[a_{i,j}] with ai,j<0a_{i,j}<0 if ii and jj are connected by only even edges, ai,j>0a_{i,j}>0 if ii and jj are connected by only odd edges, ai,jRa_{i,j}\in \mathbb{R} if ii and jj are connected by both even and odd edges, ai,j=0a_{i,j}=0 if iji\not=j and ii and jj are non-adjacent, and ai,iRa_{i,i} \in \mathbb{R} for all vertices ii. The parameter ν(G,Σ)\nu(G,\Sigma) of a signed graph (G,Σ)(G,\Sigma) is the largest nullity of any positive semidefinite matrix AS(G,Σ)A\in S(G,\Sigma) that has the Strong Arnold Property. By K3=K_3^= we denote the signed graph obtained from (K3,)(K_3,\emptyset) by adding to each even edge an odd edge in parallel. In this paper, we prove that a signed graph (G,Σ)(G,\Sigma) has ν(G,Σ)2\nu(G,\Sigma)\leq 2 if and only if (G,Σ)(G,\Sigma) has no minor isomorphic to (K4,E(K4))(K_4,E(K_4)) or K3=K_3^=.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.4628,
  title  = {A graph minors characterization of signed graphs whose signed Colin de Verdi\`ere parameter $\nu$ is two},
  author = {Marina Arav and Frank J. Hall and Zhongshan Li and Hein van der Holst},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.4628},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

15 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:08:40.764Z