Related papers: Adjacent cycle-chains are $e$-positive
We prove that a graph with a cut vertex whose deletion produces at least five connected components must be missing a connected partition of some type. We prove that this also holds if there are four connected components that each have at…
In Stanley's seminal 1995 paper on the chromatic symmetric function, he stated that there was no known graph that was not contractible to the claw and whose chromatic symmetric function was not $e$-positive, namely, not a positive linear…
It is known that the inequality $$ \frac{\chi(G)(\chi(G)-1)}{2} + |V| - \chi(G) \leq |E|$$ holds for all connected graphs, where $\chi(G)$ denotes the chromatic number of $G$. We prove that equality holds whenever the graph consists of a…
A signed graph $(G, \sigma)$ is a graph $G$ along with a function $\sigma: E(G) \to \{+,-\}$. A closed walk of a signed graph is positive (resp., negative) if it has an even (resp., odd) number of negative edges, counting repetitions. A…
In 1995 Stanley introduced the chromatic symmetric function $X_G$ of a graph $G$, whose $e$-positivity and Schur-positivity has been of large interest. In this paper we study the relative $e$-positivity and Schur-positivity between…
A graph is strongly even-cycle decomposable if the edge set of every subdivision with an even number of edges can be partitioned into cycles of even length. We prove that several fundamental composition operations that preserve the property…
We investigate the $e$-positivity and Schur positivity of the chromatic symmetric functions of some spider graphs with three legs. We obtain the positivity classification of all broom graphs and that of most double broom graphs. The methods…
In this note we classify when a skew Schur function is a positive linear combination of power sum symmetric functions. We then use this to determine precisely when any scalar multiple of a skew Schur function is the chromatic symmetric…
We introduce joins of signed graphs and explore the chromatic number of the all-positive and all-negative joins. We prove an analogue to the theorem that the chromatic number of the join of two graphs equals the sum of their chromatic…
We introduce the cycle intersection graph of a graph, an adaptation of the cycle graph of a graph, and use the structure of these graphs to prove an upper bound for the decycling number of all even graphs. This bound is shown to be…
Two celebrated conjectures in chromatic symmetric function theory concern the positivity chromatics symmetric functions of claw-free graphs. Here we extend the claw-free idea to general graphs and consider the e-positivity question for…
We give a proof of Stanley-Stembridge conjecture on chromatic symmetric functions for the class of all unit interval graphs with independence number 3. That is, we show that the chromatic symmetric function of the incomparability graph of a…
We compute an explicit $e$-positive formula for the chromatic symmetric function of a lollipop graph, $L_{m,n}$. From here we deduce that there exist countably infinite distinct $e$-positive, and hence Schur-positive, bases of the algebra…
Let G be a graph, and let $\chi$G be its chromatic polynomial. For any non-negative integers i, j, we give an interpretation for the evaluation $\chi$ (i) G (--j) in terms of acyclic orientations. This recovers the classical interpretations…
Whitney's Broken-cycle Theorem states the chromatic polynomial of a graph as a sum over special edge subsets. We give a definition of cycles in hypergraphs that preserves the statement of the theorem there.
A connected graph $\G$ is called {\em nicely distance--balanced}, whenever there exists a positive integer $\gamma=\gamma(\G)$, such that for any two adjacent vertices $u,v$ of $\G$ there are exactly $\gamma$ vertices of $\G$ which are…
We find a positive $e_I$-expansion for the chromatic symmetric function of KPKP graphs, which are graphs obtained by connecting a vertex in a complete graph with a vertex in the maximal clique of a lollipop graph by a path. This generalizes…
In this thesis we prove Schur-positivity of certain graph families. In addition, we exlpor existence of cyclic descent extensions on several families of Schur-positive sets.
The chromatic symmetric function of a graph is a generalization of the chromatic polynomial. The key motivation for studying the structure of a chromatic symmetric function is to answer positivity conjectures by Stanley in 1995 and Gasharov…
For any graph $G$ on $n$ vertices and for any {\em symmetric} subgraph $J$ of $K_{n,n}$, we construct an infinite sequence of graphs based on the pair $(G,J)$. The First graph in the sequence is $G$, then at each stage replacing every…