English

Zero forcing for inertia sets

Combinatorics 2012-11-21 v1

Abstract

Zero forcing is a combinatorial game played on a graph with a goal of turning all of the vertices of the graph black while having to use as few "unforced" moves as possible. This leads to a parameter known as the zero forcing number which can be used to give an upper bound for the maximum nullity of a matrix associated with the graph. We introduce a new variation on the zero forcing game which can be used to give an upper bound for the maximum nullity of a matrix associated with a graph that has qq negative eigenvalues. This gives some limits to the number of positive eigenvalues that such a graph can have and so can be used to form lower bounds for the inertia set of a graph.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1211.4618,
  title  = {Zero forcing for inertia sets},
  author = {Steve Butler and Jason Grout and H. Tracy Hall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1211.4618},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

16 pages, lots of figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:41:17.882Z