Related papers: Maximal Independent Sets in Polygonal Cacti
We connect two classical results in extremal graph theory concerning the number of maximal independent sets. The maximum number mis$(n)$ of maximal independent sets in an $n$-vertex graph was determined by Moon and Moser. The maximum number…
A set of graphs is said to be independent if there is no homomorphism between distinct graphs from the set. We consider the existence problems related to the independent sets of countable graphs. While the maximal size of an independent set…
Miller and Muller (1960) and independently Moon and Moser (1965) determined the maximum number of maximal independent sets in an $n$-vertex graph. We give a new and simple proof of this result.
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…
The number of maximal independent sets of the n-cycle graph C_n is known to be the nth term of the Perrin sequence. The action of the automorphism group of C_n on the family of these maximal independent sets partitions this family into…
Counting independent sets in graphs and hypergraphs under a variety of restrictions is a classical question with a long history. It is the subject of the celebrated container method which found numerous spectacular applications over the…
An independent set $I$ in a graph $G$ is maximal if $I$ is not properly contained in any other independent set of $G$. The study of maximal independent sets (MIS's) in various graphs is well-established, often focusing upon enumeration of…
The independence polynomial of a graph is the generating polynomial for the number of independent sets of each size and its roots are called independence roots. We bound the maximum modulus, $\mbox{maxmod}(n)$, of an independence root over…
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…
An independent $[1,k]$-set $S$ in a graph $G$ is a dominating set which is independent and such that every vertex not in $S$ has at most $k$ neighbors in it. The existence of such sets is not guaranteed in every graph and trees having an…
The graph theoretic concept of maximal independent set arises in several practical problems in computer science as well as in game theory. A maximal independent set is defined by the set of occupied nodes that satisfy some packing and…
Let $B(2d-1, d)$ be the subgraph of the hypercube $\mathcal{Q}_{2d-1}$ induced by its two largest layers. Duffus, Frankl and R\"odl proposed the problem of finding the asymptotics for the logarithm of the number of maximal independent sets…
Let $MIS(G)$ be the set of all maximal independent sets in a graph $G$, and let $mis(G)=|MIS(G)|$. In this paper, we show that for any tree $T$ with $n$ vertices and independence number $\alpha$, \[mis(T)\geq f(n-\alpha),\] and for any…
Computing the maximum size of an independent set in a graph is a famously hard combinatorial problem that has been well-studied for various classes of graphs. When it comes to random graphs, only the classical Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi-Gilbert…
Galvin showed that for all fixed $\delta$ and sufficiently large $n$, the $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree $\delta$ that admits the most independent sets is the complete bipartite graph $K_{\delta,n-\delta}$. He conjectured that except…
Nielsen proved that the maximum number of maximal independent sets (MIS's) of size $k$ in an $n$-vertex graph is asymptotic to $(n/k)^k$, with the extremal construction a disjoint union of $k$ cliques with sizes as close to $n/k$ as…
In this short survey article, we present an elementary, yet quite powerful, method of enumerating independent sets in graphs. This method was first employed more than three decades ago by Kleitman and Winston and has subsequently been used…
A vertex subset $W\subseteq V$ of the graph $G = (V,E)$ is an independent dominating set if every vertex in $V\setminus W$ is adjacent to at least one vertex in $W$ and the vertices of $W$ are pairwise non-adjacent. We enumerate independent…
Dallard, Milani\v{c}, and \v{S}torgel [arXiv '22] ask if for every class excluding a fixed planar graph $H$ as an induced minor, Maximum Independent Set can be solved in polynomial time, and show that this is indeed the case when $H$ is any…
In 1973, Katona raised the problem of determining the maximum number of subsets in a separating cover on n elements. The answer to Katona's question turns out to be the inverse to the answer to a much simpler question: what is the largest…