Related papers: Independent sets in graphs with given minimum degr…
The $k$-independence number of a graph $G$ is the maximum size of a set of vertices at pairwise distance greater than $k$. In this paper, for each positive integer $k$, we prove sharp upper bounds for the $k$-independence number in an…
By Brook's Theorem, every n-vertex graph of maximum degree at most Delta >= 3 and clique number at most Delta is Delta-colorable, and thus it has an independent set of size at least n/Delta. We give an approximate characterization of graphs…
We develop a new method for enumerating independent sets of a fixed size in general graphs, and we use this method to show that a conjecture of Engbers and Galvin holds for all but finitely many graphs. We also use our method to prove…
We analyse the size of an independent set in a random graph on $n$ vertices with specified vertex degrees, constructed via a simple greedy algorithm: order the vertices arbitrarily, and, for each vertex in turn, place it in the independent…
The size of a largest independent set of vertices in a given graph $G$ is denoted by $\alpha(G)$ and is called its independence number (or stability number). Given a graph $G$ and an integer $K,$ it is NP-complete to decide whether…
Recently, Davies, Jenssen, Perkins, and Roberts gave a very nice proof of the result (due, in various parts, to Kahn, Galvin-Tetali, and Zhao) that the independence polynomial of a $d$-regular graph is maximized by disjoint copies of…
Settling Kahn's conjecture (2001), we prove the following upper bound on the number $i(G)$ of independent sets in a graph $G$ without isolated vertices: \[ i(G) \le \prod_{uv \in E(G)} i(K_{d_u,d_v})^{1/(d_u d_v)}, \] where $d_u$ is the…
For a given positive integer t we consider graphs having maximal independent sets of precisely t distinct cardinalities and restrict our attention to those that have no vertices of degree one. In the situation when t is four or larger and…
An independent vertex set of a graph is a set of vertices of the graph in which no two vertices are adjacent, and a maximal independent set is one that is not a proper subset of any other independent set. In this paper we count the number…
Amongst $d$-regular $r$-uniform hypergraphs on $n$ vertices, which ones have the largest number of independent sets? While the analogous problem for graphs (originally raised by Granville) is now well-understood, it is not even clear what…
We show that the number of independent sets in an N-vertex, d-regular graph is at most (2^{d+1} - 1)^{N/2d}, where the bound is sharp for a disjoint union of complete d-regular bipartite graphs. This settles a conjecture of Alon in 1991 and…
The degree set of a finite simple graph $G$ is the set of distinct degrees of vertices of $G$. A theorem of Kapoor, Polimeni & Wall asserts that the least order of a graph with a given degree set $\mathscr D$ is $1+\max \mathscr D$.…
We describe an infinite family of graphs $G_n$, where $G_n$ has $n$ vertices, independence number at least $n/4$, and no set of less than $\sqrt{n}/2$ vertices intersects all its maximum independent sets. This is motivated by a question of…
The independence polynomial $I(G,x)$ of a finite graph $G$ is the generating function for the sequence of the number of independent sets of each cardinality. We investigate whether, given a fixed number of vertices and edges, there exists…
We prove an asymptotically tight lower bound on the average size of independent sets in a triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices with maximum degree $d$, showing that an independent set drawn uniformly at random from such a graph has expected…
We study the problem of maximizing the number of independent sets in $n$-vertex $k$-chromatic $\ell$-connected graphs. First we consider maximizing the total number of independent sets in such graphs with $n$ sufficiently large, and for…
For a fixed positive integer $k$, a set $S$ of vertices of a graph or multigraph is called a $k$-independent set if the subgraph induced by $S$ has maximum degree less than $k$. The well-known algorithm MAX finds a maximal $k$-independent…
We use an entropy based method to study two graph maximization problems. We upper bound the number of matchings of fixed size $\ell$ in a $d$-regular graph on $N$ vertices. For $\frac{2\ell}{N}$ bounded away from 0 and 1, the logarithm of…
This paper generalizes and unifies the existing spectral bounds on the $k$-independence number of a graph, which is the maximum size of a set of vertices at pairwise distance greater than $k$. The previous bounds known in the literature…
In this paper, we develop efficient exact and approximate algorithms for computing a maximum independent set in random graphs. In a random graph $G$, each pair of vertices are joined by an edge with a probability $p$, where $p$ is a…