Related papers: On Zero-free Intervals of Flow Polynomials

A graph $G$ is well-covered if all its maximal stable sets have the same size, denoted by alpha(G) (M. D. Plummer, 1970). If for any $k$ the $k$-th coefficient of a polynomial I(G;x) is equal to the number of stable sets of cardinality $k$…

A $3$-dimensional nowhere-zero flow on a graph $G$ is a flow where each edge is assigned a $3$-dimensional vector with unit norm (which corresponds to the points of a $2$-dimensional unit sphere $S^2$). K. Jain posed two conjectures related…

A set $R\subseteq E(G)$ of a graph $G$ is $k$-removable if $G-R$ has a nowhere-zero $k$-flow. We prove that every graph $G$ admitting a nowhere-zero $4$-flow has a $3$-removable subset consisting of at most $\frac{1}{6}|E(G)|$ edges. This…

The independence polynomial $I(G;x)$ of a graph $G$ is $I(G;x)=\sum_{k=1}^{\alpha(G)} s_k x^k$, where $s_k$ is the number of independent sets in $G$ of size $k$. The decycling number of a graph $G$, denoted $\phi(G)$, is the minimum size of…

Let $G$ be a bridgeless cubic graph, and $\mu_2(G)$ the minimum number $k$ such that two 1-factors of $G$ intersect in $k$ edges. A cyclically $n$-edge-connected cubic graph $G$ has a nowhere-zero 5-flow if (1) $n \geq 6$ and $\mu_2(G) \leq…

For a finite multigraph G, let \Lambda(G) denote the lattice of integer flows of G -- this is a finitely generated free abelian group with an integer-valued positive definite bilinear form. Bacher, de la Harpe, and Nagnibeda show that if G…

Let $G$ be a graph of minimum degree at least two with no induced subgraph isomorphic to $K_{1,6}$. We prove that if $G$ is not isomorphic to one of eight exceptional graphs, then it is possible to assign two-element subsets of…

In this article we introduce the flow polynomial of a digraph and use it to study nowhere-zero flows from a commutative algebraic perspective. Using Hilbert's Nullstellensatz, we establish a relation between nowhere-zero flows and dual…

A $k$-weak bisection of a cubic graph $G$ is a partition of the vertex-set of $G$ into two parts $V_1$ and $V_2$ of equal size, such that each connected component of the subgraph of $G$ induced by $V_i$ ($i=1,2$) is a tree of at most $k-2$…

A bridgeless graph $G$ is called $3$-flow-critical if it does not admit a nowhere-zero $3$-flow, but $G/e$ has for any $e\in E(G)$. Tutte's $3$-flow conjecture can be equivalently stated as that every $3$-flow-critical graph contains a…

Let $T$ be a forest. We study polynomially high-chromatic pure pairs in graphs with no $T$ as an induced subgraph ($T$-free graphs in other words), with applications to the polynomial Gy\'arf\'as-Sumner conjecture. In addition to reproving…

The domination polynomial of a graph $G$ is given by $D(G,x)=\sum_{k=0}^{n} d_k(G)x^k$ where $d_k(G)$ records the number of $k$-element dominating sets in $G$. A conjecture of Alikhani and Peng asserts that these polynomials have unimodal…

We prove that the (real or complex) chromatic roots of a series-parallel graph with maxmaxflow Lambda lie in the disc |q-1| < (Lambda-1)/log 2. More generally, the same bound holds for the (real or complex) roots of the multivariate Tutte…

For each uniformity $k \geq 3$, we construct $k$-uniform linear hypergraphs $G$ with arbitrarily large maximum degree $\Delta$ whose independence polynomial $Z_G$ has a root $\lambda$ with $\lvert\lambda\rvert = O\left(\frac{\log…

We introduce and study a multivariate function that counts nowhere-zero flows on a graph G, in which each edge of G has an individual capacity. We prove that the associated counting function is a piecewise-defined polynomial in these…

Given a directed graph $G = (V, E)$ with $n$ vertices, $m$ edges and a designated source vertex $s\in V$, we consider the question of finding a sparse subgraph $H$ of $G$ that preserves the flow from $s$ up to a given threshold $\lambda$…

This article is studying the roots of the reliability polynomials of linear consecutive-\textit{k}-out-of-\textit{n}:\textit{F} systems. We are able to prove that these roots are unbounded in the complex plane, for any fixed $k\ge2$. In the…

We study the flow spectrum ${\cal S}(G)$ and the integer flow spectrum $\overline{{\cal S}}(G)$ of signed $(2t+1)$-regular graphs. We show that if $r \in {\cal S}(G)$, then $r = 2+\frac{1}{t}$ or $r \geq 2 + \frac{2}{2t-1}$. Furthermore, $2…

A rich $k$-flow is a nowhere-zero $k$-flow $\phi$ such that, for every pair of adjacent edges $e$ and $f$, $|\phi(e)| \neq |\phi(f)|$. A graph is rich flow admissible if it admits a rich $k$-flow for some integer $k$. In this paper, we…

The Wiener polynomial of a connected graph $G$ is defined as $W(G;x)=\sum x^{d(u,v)}$, where $d(u,v)$ denotes the distance between $u$ and $v$, and the sum is taken over all unordered pairs of distinct vertices of $G$. We examine the nature…