Related papers: Solving Functional Equations Dear to W.T. Tutte us…
In the 1970s, William Tutte developed a clever algebraic approach, based on certain "invariants", to solve a functional equation that arises in the enumeration of properly colored triangulations. The enumeration of plane lattice walks…
In the 1970s, Tutte developed a clever algebraic approach, based on certain "invariants" , to solve a functional equation that arises in the enumeration of properly colored triangulations. The enumeration of plane lattice walks confined to…
We present recent results on the enumeration of $q$-coloured planar maps, where each monochromatic edge carries a weight $\nu$. This is equivalent to weighting each map by its Tutte polynomial, or to solving the $q$-state Potts model on…
We give a new characterization of the Tutte polynomial of graphs. Our characterization is formally close (but inequivalent) to the original definition given by Tutte as the generating function of spanning trees counted according to…
We solve three enumerative problems concerning families of planar maps. More precisely, we establish algebraic equations for the generating function of non-separable triangulations in which all vertices have degree at least d, for a certain…
The Tutte polynomial is a classical invariant, important in combinatorics and statistical mechanics. An essential feature of the Tutte polynomial is the duality for planar graphs G, $T_G(X,Y)\; =\; {T}_{G^*}(Y,X)$ where $G^*$ denotes the…
In 1999, at one of his last public lectures, Tutte discussed a question he had considered since the times of the Four Color Conjecture. He asked whether the 4-coloring complex of a planar triangulation could have two components in which all…
The multivariate Tutte polynomial (known to physicists as the Potts-model partition function) can be defined on an arbitrary finite graph G, or more generally on an arbitrary matroid M, and encodes much important combinatorial information…
The block-cut tree decomposes a connected graph along its cutvertices, displaying its 2-connected components. The Tutte-decomposition extends this idea to 2-separators in 2-connected graphs, yielding a canonical tree-decomposition that…
Cayley polytopes were defined recently as convex hulls of Cayley compositions introduced by Cayley in 1857. In this paper we resolve Braun's conjecture, which expresses the volume of Cayley polytopes in terms of the number of connected…
Unlike Whitney's definition of the corank-nullity generating function $T(G;x+1,y+1)$, Tutte's definition of his now eponymous polynomial $T(G;x,y)$ requires a total order on the edges of which the polynomial is a posteriori independent.…
A fourientation of a graph is a choice for each edge of the graph whether to orient that edge in either direction, leave it unoriented, or biorient it. Fixing a total order on the edges and a reference orientation of the graph, we…
In this methodological article on experimental-yet-rigorous enumerative combinatorics, we use two instructive case studies, to show that often, just like Alexander the Great before us, the simple, "cheating" solution to a hard problem is…
Employing two models, we show that various counting functions of a random variable defined by restriction or contraction of a ranked set with multiplicity (e.g., classical and arithmetic matroids) have expectations given by the…
We define and study the Tutte polynomial of a hyperplane arrangement. We introduce a method for computing it by solving an enumerative problem in a finite field. For specific arrangements, the computation of Tutte polynomials is then…
Matchings were among the earliest motivations for graph theory. They subsequently remained a central goal, inspiring the development of new tools that went well beyond problems directly concerning matchings. These tools proved widely…
The Tutte polynomial is originally a bivariate polynomial enumerating the colorings of a graph and of its dual graph. But it reveals more of the internal structure of the graph like its number of forests, of spanning subgraphs, and of…
We consider the $3$-state Potts generating function $T(\nu,w)$ of planar triangulations; that is, the bivariate series that counts planar triangulations with vertices coloured in $3$ colours, weighted by their size (number of vertices,…
We prove some variants of the exponential formula and apply them to the multivariate Tutte polynomials (also known as Potts-model partition functions) of graphs. We also prove some further identities for the multivariate Tutte polynomial,…
We present an empirical-yet-rigorous approach for solving a wide class of functional equations, thereby automating many results that previously required considerable human ingenuity and human labor.