Related papers: Very well-covered graphs and the unimodality conje…

Let $G$ be a graph. A set $S$ of vertices in $G$ dominates the graph if every vertex of $G$ is either in $S$ or a neighbor of a vertex in $S$. Finding a minimal cardinality set which dominates the graph is an NP-complete problem. The graph…

The independence polynomial of a graph is termed {\it stable} if all its roots are located in the left half-plane $\{z \in \mathbb{C} : \mathrm{Re}(z) \leq 0\}$, and the graph itself is also referred to as stable. Brown and Cameron…

The independence polynomial $I(G;x)$ of a graph $G$ is $I(G;x)=\sum_{k=1}^{\alpha(G)} s_k x^k$, where $s_k$ is the number of independent sets in $G$ of size $k$. The decycling number of a graph $G$, denoted $\phi(G)$, is the minimum size of…

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…

We develop a family-based route to unicyclic graphs whose independence polynomials are unimodal but not log-concave. The paper is organized around one flagship statement: for the explicit KL-closure family $U_{k,r}$, with $r\in\{0,1,2\}$…

As introduced by Gutman and Harary, the independence polynomial of a graph serves as the generating polynomial of its independent sets. In 1987, Alavi, Malde, Schwenk and Erd\H{o}s conjectured that the independence polynomials of all trees…

A polynomial is said to be unimodal if its coefficients are non-decreasing and then non-increasing. The domination polynomial of a graph $G$ is the generating function of the number of domination sets of each cardinality in $G$, and its…

The stability number of a graph G, denoted by alpha(G), is the cardinality of a stable set of maximum size in G. A graph is well-covered if every maximal stable set has the same size. G is a Koenig-Egervary graph if its order equals…

A covariance graph is an undirected graph associated with a multivariate probability distribution of a given random vector where each vertex represents each of the different components of the random vector and where the absence of an edge…

For every finite simple connected graph $G = (V,E)$, we introduce an invariant, its blowup-polynomial $p_G(\{ n_v : v \in V \})$. This is obtained by dividing the determinant of the distance matrix of its blowup graph $G[{\bf n}]$…

Given a graph $G$ whose edges are perfectly reliable and whose nodes each operate independently with probability $p\in[0,1],$ the node reliability of $G$ is the probability that at least one node is operational and that the operational…

Given a graph $G=(V,E)$, a subset $X$ of $V$ is an interval of $G$ provided that for any $a, b\in X$ and $ x\in V \setminus X$, $\{a,x\}\in E$ if and only if $\{b,x\}\in E$. For example, $\emptyset$, $\{x\}(x\in V)$ and $V$ are intervals of…

An independent set in a graph is a set of pairwise non-adjacent vertices, and a(G) is the size of a maximum independent set in the graph G. If s_{k} is the number of independent sets of cardinality k in G, then…

Let $e$ be a positive integer, $p$ be an odd prime, $q=p^{e}$, and $\Bbb F_q$ be the finite field of $q$ elements. Let $f,g \in \Bbb F_q [X,Y]$. The graph $G=G_q(f,g)$ is a bipartite graph with vertex partitions $P=\Bbb F_q^3$ and $L=\Bbb…

Let $G = (V,E)$ be a simple finite graph. The corresponding bunkbed graph $G^\pm$ consists of two copies $G^+ = (V^+,E^+),G^- = (V^-,E^-)$ of $G$ and additional edges connecting any two vertices $v_+ \in V_+,v_- \in V_-$ that are the copies…

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…

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…

Let $G$ be a finite simple graph on $n$ vertices and set $R=\Bbbk[x_1,\dots,x_n]$, with edge ideal $I(G)$ and cover ideal $J(G)$. We give an explicit description of the $h$-polynomial of $R/J(G)$, in a form that extends to the Alexander…

Given a simple graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, a subset of vertices $U \subseteq V(G)$ is dominating if every vertex of $V(G)$ is either in $U$ or adjacent to a vertex of $U$. The domination polynomial of $G$ is the generating function whose…

The chromatic polynomial $P(G,x)$ of a graph $G$ of order $n$ can be expressed as $\sum\limits_{i=1}^n(-1)^{n-i}a_{i}x^i$, where $a_i$ is interpreted as the number of broken-cycle free spanning subgraphs of $G$ with exactly $i$ components.…