Related papers: Number of Independent Sets in Regular and Irregula…
This paper studies the problem of upper bounding the number of independent sets in a graph, expressed in terms of its degree distribution. For bipartite regular graphs, Kahn (2001) established a tight upper bound using an…
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…
We study the problems of bounding the number weak and strong independent sets in $r$-uniform, $d$-regular, $n$-vertex linear hypergraphs with no cross-edges. In the case of weak independent sets, we provide an upper bound that is tight up…
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…
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…
This survey concerns regular graphs that are extremal with respect to the number of independent sets, and more generally, graph homomorphisms. More precisely, in the family of of $d$-regular graphs, which graph $G$ maximizes/minimizes the…
An $n$-vertex, $d$-regular graph can have at most $2^{n/2+o_d(n)}$ independent sets. In this paper we address what happens with this upper bound when we impose the further condition that the graph has independence number at most $\alpha$.…
Write ${\cal I}(G)$ for the set of independent sets of a graph $G$ and $i(G)$ for $|{\cal I}(G)|$. It has been conjectured (by Alon and Kahn) that for an $N$-vertex, $d$-regular graph $G$, $$ i(G) \leq \left(2^{d+1}-1\right)^{N/2d}. $$ If…
The notion of a Riordan graph was introduced recently, and it is a far-reaching generalization of the well-known Pascal graphs and Toeplitz graphs. However, apart from a certain subclass of Toeplitz graphs, nothing was known on independent…
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…
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…
We determine the asymptotics of the independence number of the random $d$-regular graph for all $d \ge d_0$. It is highly concentrated, with constant-order fluctuations around $n\alpha_* - c_*\log n$ for explicit constants $\alpha_*(d)$ and…
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…
There has been interest recently in maximizing the number of independent sets in graphs. For example, the Kahn-Zhao theorem gives an upper bound on the number of independent sets in a $d$-regular graph. Similarly, it is a corollary of the…
We prove a tight upper bound on the independence polynomial (and total number of independent sets) of cubic graphs of girth at least 5. The bound is achieved by unions of the Heawood graph, the point/line incidence graph of the Fano plane.…
Studying independent sets of maximum size is equivalent to considering the hard-core model with the fugacity parameter $\lambda$ tending to infinity. Finding the independence ratio of random $d$-regular graphs for some fixed degree $d$ has…
This paper presents a linear prioritized local algorithm that computes large independent sets on a random $d$-regular graph with small and fixed degree $d$. We studied experimentally the independence ratio obtained by the algorithm when $ d…
The regular independence number, introduced by Albertson and Boutin in 1990, is the size of a largest set of independent vertices with the same degree. Lower bounds were proven for this invariant, in terms of the order, for trees and planar…
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…
For a fixed graph G, a maximal independent set is an independent set that is not a proper subset of any other independent set. P. Erd\"os, and independently, J. W. Moon and L. Moser, and R. E. Miller and D. E. Muller, determined the maximum…