Related papers: Independent Sets and Continued Fractions

We consider the family of graphs whose vertex set is Z^k where two vertices are connected by an edge when their l\infty-distance is 1. We prove the optimal vertex isoperimetric inequality for this family of graphs. That is, given a positive…

We propose the conjecture that every graph $G$ of order $n$ with less than $3n-6$ edges has a vertex cut that induces a forest. Maximal planar graphs do not have such vertex cuts and show that the density condition would be best possible.…

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…

For a positive integer $r$, a distance-$r$ independent set in an undirected graph $G$ is a set $I\subseteq V(G)$ of vertices pairwise at distance greater than $r$, while a distance-$r$ dominating set is a set $D\subseteq V(G)$ such that…

The arboricity $\Gamma(G)$ of an undirected graph $G = (V,E)$ is the minimal number such that $E$ can be partitioned into $\Gamma(G)$ forests. Nash-Williams' formula states that $k = \lceil \gamma(G) \rceil$, where $\gamma(G)$ is the…

Every $n$-vertex planar triangle-free graph with maximum degree at most $3$ has an independent set of size at least $\frac{3}{8}n$. This was first conjectured by Albertson, Bollob\'as and Tucker, and was later proved by Heckman and Thomas.…

The basis number of a graph $G$ is the minimum $k$ such that the cycle space of $G$ is generated by a family of cycles using each edge at most $k$ times. A classical result of Mac Lane states that planar graphs are exactly graphs with basis…

An independent set in a graph $G$ is a set of pairwise non-adjacent vertices. A tree decomposition of $G$ is a pair $(T, \chi)$ where $T$ is a tree and $\chi : V(T) \rightarrow 2^{V(G)}$ is a function satisfying the following two axioms:…

We show that every (sub)cubic n-vertex graph with sufficiently large girth has fractional chromatic number at most 2.2978 which implies that it contains an independent set of size at least 0.4352n. Our bound on the independence number is…

For non-negative integers $(d_n(k))_{k \ge 1}$ such that $\sum_{k \ge 1} d_n(k) = n$, we sample a bipartite planar map with $n$ faces uniformly at random amongst those which have $d_n(k)$ faces of degree $2k$ for every $k \ge 1$ and we…

Consider a family of graphs having a fixed girth and a large size. We give an optimal lower asymptotic bound on the number of even cycles of any constant length, as the order of the graphs tends to infinity.

In this paper, we establish a couple of results on extremal problems in bipartite graphs. Firstly, we show that every sufficiently large bipartite graph with average degree $D$ and with $n$ vertices on each side has a balanced independent…

A theorem of Shearer states that every $n$-vertex triangle-free graph of maximum degree $d \geq 2$ contains an independent set of size at least $(d\log d - d + 1)/(d - 1)^2 \cdot n$. Ajtai, Koml\'{o}s, Pintz, Spencer and Szemer\'{e}di…

We continue the study of $(tw,\omega)$-bounded graph classes, that is, hereditary graph classes in which large treewidth is witnessed by the presence of a large clique, and the relation of this property to boundedness of the…

A $k$-star decomposition of a graph is a partition of its edges into $k$-stars (i.e., $k$ edges with a common vertex). The paper studies the following problem: for what values of $k>d/2$ does the random $d$-regular graph have a $k$-star…

A well-known result of Ajtai et al. from 1982 states that every $k$-graph $H$ on $n$ vertices, with girth at least five, and average degree $t^{k-1}$ contains an independent set of size $c n (\log t)^{1/(k-1)}/t$ for some $c>0$. In this…

Given a graph $G = (V,E)$, a threshold function $t~ :~ V \rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ and an integer $k$, we study the Harmless Set problem, where the goal is to find a subset of vertices $S \subseteq V$ of size at least $k$ such that every…

Let us call a simple graph on $n\geq 2$ vertices a prime gap graph if its vertex degrees are $1$ and the first $n-1$ prime gaps. We show that such a graph exists for every large $n$, and in fact for every $n\geq 2$ if we assume the Riemann…

For a graph $G$, let $c_k(G)$ be the number of spanning trees of $G$ with maximum degree at most $k$. For $k \ge 3$, it is proved that every connected $n$-vertex $r$-regular graph $G$ with $r \ge \frac{n}{k+1}$ satisfies $$ c_k(G)^{1/n} \ge…

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…