组合数学

We introduce the notion of colorful minors, which generalizes the classical concept of rooted minors in graphs. A $q$-colorful graph is defined as a pair $(G, \chi),$ where $G$ is a graph and $\chi$ assigns to each vertex a (possibly empty)…

A congruence of the weak order is simple if its quotientope is a simple polytope. We provide an alternative elementary proof of the characterization of the simple congruences in terms of forbidden up and down arcs. For this, we provide a…

In 2017, Nikiforov introduced the concept of the $A_{\alpha}$-matrix, as a linear convex combination of the adjacency matrix and the degree diagonal matrix of a graph. This matrix has attracted increasing attention in recent years, as it…

Quandles are right-invertible, right-self distributive (and idempotent) algebraic structures. Therefore, right translations are quandle automorphisms. It has been interesting to look into finite quandles by way of the cycle structures their…

We give a concrete combinatorial interpretation of the coefficients of the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials of Dowling geometries, a family of matroids which generalizes braid matroids of types A and B. Furthermore, we interpret the coefficients…

Team captains Alice and Bob divide up $2m$ footballers, each reduced to a real-valued score, into two teams of $m$ footballers each. On each turn, one captain plays picker, and the other chooser: the picker names a footballer yet to be…

We study the chromatic number of graphs that exclude a clique as a strong odd immersion and have independence number two. Given a graph $G$ and $t\in\mathbb{Z}^+$, we prove that if $\alpha(G)\leq 2$ and $G$ has no strong odd…

We develop a saddle-point theory for acyclic orientations and negative chromatic evaluations of complete multipartite graphs, with applications to OEIS A267383, A372326, A372084, A372395, and A370613. The main tool is an exact Gamma-type…

The tree-independence number of a graph is the minimum, over all tree-decompositions of the graph, of the maximum size of an independent set contained in a bag. Graph classes of bounded tree-independence number have strong structural and…

Hypergraphic polytopes $\Delta_{\mathbb{H}}$ arise as Minkowski sums of simplices indexed by the hyperedges of a hypergraph $\mathbb{H}$. Orienting the $1$-skeleton of such a polytope by a certain generic linear functional gives rise to the…

For a graph $G$ with vertex set $V(G)$ and a positive integer $i$, an $i$-packing in $G$ is a subset $X$ of $V(G)$ such that the distance between any two distinct vertices of $X$ is greater than $i$. The packing chromatic number of $G$,…

Erd\H{o}s and Hajnal proposed a problem that: is it true that every $(2n+1)$-vertex graph with $n^2+n+1$ edges contains two vertices of equal degree connected by a path of length three? The edge bound is sharp by the complete bipartite…

For a graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and a positive integer $k \leq n$, let $s_k(G)$ be the number of subtrees (subgraphs that are trees, not necessarily induced) of $G$ with $k$ vertices. The subtree polynomial of $G$ is $S(G;x) =…

Let $A = \{a_1, \ldots, a_k\}$ be a nonempty finite subset of an additive abelian group $G$. For a nonnegative integer $h$, the \emph{$h$-fold signed sumset} of $A$, denoted by $h_{\pm} A$, is defined by $$ h_{\pm} A = \Biggl\{\sum_{i =…

The Helmholtzian matrix of a graph $G=(V(G),E(G))$ is a graph-theoretic analogue of the vector Laplacian (or Helmholtz operator) [S. Li, L. Lu, J.F. Wang, A graph discretization of vector Laplacian, 379 (2026) 446--460]. Motivated by the…

We study tilings of rectangular boards using unit squares together with a single type of big tile shaped as a Ferrers diagram. We derive generating functions for these tilings, prove real-rootedness and interlacing properties of associated…

We investigate forbidden subgraph conditions in the complement of a graph that guarantee positive Lin--Lu--Yau curvature. In particular, we prove that every graph whose complement contains no $4$-cycles has positive Lin--Lu--Yau curvature,…

A perfect code in a graph $\Gamma = (V, E)$ is a subset $C$ of $V$ such that no two vertices in $C$ are adjacent and every vertex in $V \setminus C$ is adjacent to exactly one vertex in $C$. A subgroup $H$ of a group $G$ is called a…

An alternative generating function is proposed to enumerate row-convex polyominoes without internal holes on a discrete grid. The approach is based on integer partitions of the total area, where each partition corresponds to a sequence of…

We obtain a new lower bound on the largest Sidon subset of an arbitrary finite set of integers. If $H(n)$ denotes the minimum, over all $n$-element subsets of $\mathbb Z$, of the largest Sidon subset they contain, we prove that $H(n)…