Related papers: Complexes of graphs with bounded independence numb…

We study the class of independence complexes of claw-free graphs. The main theorem give good bounds on the connectivity of these complexes, given bounds for a few subcomplexes of the same class. Two applications are presented. Firstly, we…

An independent dominating set of a graph, also known as a maximal independent set, is a set $S$ of pairwise non-adjacent vertices such that every vertex not in $S$ is adjacent to some vertex in $S$. We prove that for $\Delta=4$ or…

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…

We consider numbers and sizes of independent sets in graphs with minimum degree at least $d$, when the number $n$ of vertices is large. In particular we investigate which of these graphs yield the maximum numbers of independent sets of…

Given an integer $\Delta \ge 3$, let ${\cal G}_{\Delta }$ be the set of connected graphs $G\neq K_{\Delta +1}$ with maximum degree $\Delta $ and, for $i=1,\cdots, \Delta $, let $V_i(G)$ be the set of vertices of $G$ of degree $i$. \\ We…

Let $G$ be a graph with vertex set $V(G)$ and edge set $E(G)$. A set $I_0(G) \subseteq V(G)$ is a vertex independent set if no two vertices in $I_0(G)$ are adjacent in $G$. We study $\alpha_1(G)$, which is the maximum cardinality of a set…

For $r\geq 1$, the $r$-independence complex of a graph $G$ is a simplicial complex whose faces are subset $I \subseteq V(G)$ such that each component of the induced subgraph $G[I]$ has at most $r$ vertices. In this article, we determine the…

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…

For given graph $H$, the independence number $\alpha(H)$ of $H$, is the size of the maximum independent set of $V(H)$. Finding the maximum independent set in a graph is a NP-hard problem. Another version of the independence number is…

A maximal independent set in a graph $G$ is an independent set that cannot be extended to a larger independent set by adding any vertex from $G$. This paper investigates the problem of determining the maximum number of maximal independent…

This paper investigates the shellability of $r$-independence complexes $\mathcal{I}_r(G)$, a generalization of classical independence complexes introduced by Paolini and Salvetti. For a graph $G$, a subset $A \subseteq V(G)$ is…

Let $G = (V,E)$ be a graph and $k \ge 0$ an integer. A $k$-independent set $S \subseteq V$ is a set of vertices such that the maximum degree in the graph induced by $S$ is at most $k$. With $\alpha_k(G)$ we denote the maximum cardinality of…

Let $i_t(G)$ be the number of independent sets of size $t$ in a graph $G$. Engbers and Galvin asked how large $i_t(G)$ could be in graphs with minimum degree at least $\delta$. They further conjectured that when $n\geq 2\delta$ and $t\geq…

Given a graph $G$, the non-cover complex of $G$ is the combinatorial Alexander dual of the independence complex of $G$. Aharoni asked if the non-cover complex of a graph $G$ without isolated vertices is $(|V(G)|-i \gamma(G)-1)$-collapsible…

Let ${\rm ind}(G)$ be the number of independent sets in a graph $G$. We show that if $G$ has maximum degree at most $5$ then $$ {\rm ind}(G) \leq 2^{{\rm iso}(G)} \prod_{uv \in E(G)} {\rm ind}(K_{d(u),d(v)})^{\frac{1}{d(u)d(v)}} $$ (where…

Let $G$ be a graph on $V$. A vertex subset $S \subset V$ is called a cover of $G$ if its complement is an independent set, and $S$ is called a noncover if it is not a cover of $G$. A noncover complex $NC(G)$ of $G$ is the simplicial complex…

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…

Let $i_t(G)$ denote the number of independent sets of size $t$ in a graph $G$. Levit and Mandrescu have conjectured that for all bipartite $G$ the sequence $(i_t(G))_{t \geq 0}$ (the {\em independent set sequence} of $G$) is unimodal. We…

An $r$-graph $G$ is a pair $(V,E)$ such that $V$ is a set and $E$ is a family of $r$-element subsets of $V$. The \emph{independence number} $\alpha(G)$ of $G$ is the size of a largest subset $I$ of $V$ such that no member of $E$ is a subset…

Extremal problems involving the enumeration of graph substructures have a long history in graph theory. For example, the number of independent sets in a $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices is at most $(2^{d+1}-1)^{n/2d}$ by the Kahn-Zhao…