English

Counting directed acyclic and elementary digraphs

Combinatorics 2020-04-21 v2 Data Structures and Algorithms Probability

Abstract

Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) can be characterised as directed graphs whose strongly connected components are isolated vertices. Using this restriction on the strong components, we discover that when m=cnm = cn, where mm is the number of directed edges, nn is the number of vertices, and c<1c < 1, the asymptotic probability that a random digraph is acyclic is an explicit function p(c)p(c), such that p(0)=1p(0) = 1 and p(1)=0p(1) = 0. When m=n(1+μn1/3)m = n(1 + \mu n^{-1/3}), the asymptotic behaviour changes, and the probability that a digraph is acyclic becomes n1/3C(μ)n^{-1/3} C(\mu), where C(μ)C(\mu) is an explicit function of μ\mu. {\L}uczak and Seierstad (2009, Random Structures & Algorithms, 35(3), 271--293) showed that, as μ\mu \to -\infty, the strongly connected components of a random digraph with nn vertices and m=n(1+μn1/3)m = n(1 + \mu n^{-1/3}) directed edges are, with high probability, only isolated vertices and cycles. We call such digraphs elementary digraphs. We express the probability that a random digraph is elementary as a function of μ\mu. Those results are obtained using techniques from analytic combinatorics, developed in particular to study random graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.08659,
  title  = {Counting directed acyclic and elementary digraphs},
  author = {Élie de Panafieu and Sergey Dovgal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.08659},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

10 pages; Accepted to FPSAC. Updated in accordance with the comments of reviewers

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:19:05.409Z