An equality for balanced digraphs
Combinatorics
2025-11-21 v2
Abstract
Consider a directed multigraph that is balanced (i.e., at each vertex, the indegree equals the outdegree). Let be its set of arcs. Fix an integer . Let be a vertex of . We show that the number of -element subsets of that contain no cycles but contain a path from each vertex to (we call them "-convergences") is independent on . This generalizes known facts about spanning arborescences, acyclic orientations and maximal acyclic subdigraphs (or, equivalently, minimum feedback arc sets). Moreover, this result can be generalized even further, replacing "contain no cycles" with "have a given set of cycles".
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.22388,
title = {An equality for balanced digraphs},
author = {Darij Grinberg and Benjamin Liber},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.22388},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
21 pages. v2 adds Theorems 1.3 and 1.5 and further details in the proofs. Comments are welcome!