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Shannon capacity and the categorical product

Combinatorics 2019-11-05 v1 Computational Complexity Information Theory math.IT

Abstract

Shannon OR-capacity COR(G)C_{\rm OR}(G) of a graph GG, that is the traditionally more often used Shannon AND-capacity of the complementary graph, is a homomorphism monotone graph parameter satisfying COR(F×G)min{COR(F),COR(G)}C_{\rm OR}(F\times G)\le\min\{C_{\rm OR}(F),C_{\rm OR}(G)\} for every pair of graphs, where F×GF\times G is the categorical product of graphs FF and GG. Here we initiate the study of the question when could we expect equality in this inequality. Using a strong recent result of Zuiddam, we show that if this "Hedetniemi-type" equality is not satisfied for some pair of graphs then the analogous equality is also not satisfied for this graph pair by some other graph invariant that has a much "nicer" behavior concerning some different graph operations. In particular, unlike Shannon capacity or the chromatic number, this other invariant is both multiplicative under the OR-product and additive under the join operation, while it is also nondecreasing along graph homomorphisms. We also present a natural lower bound on COR(F×G)C_{\rm OR}(F\times G) and elaborate on the question of how to find graph pairs for which it is known to be strictly less, than the upper bound min{COR(F),COR(G)}\min\{C_{\rm OR}(F),C_{\rm OR}(G)\}. We present such graph pairs using the properties of Paley graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.00944,
  title  = {Shannon capacity and the categorical product},
  author = {Gábor Simonyi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.00944},
  year   = {2019}
}

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14 pages