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arXiv · 2305.01784

The independence polynomial of trees is not always log-concave starting from order 26

Ohr Kadrawi·Vadim E. Levit
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Abstract

An independent set in a graph is a collection of vertices that are not adjacent to each other. The cardinality of the largest independent set in $G$ is represented by $\alpha(G)$. The independence polynomial of a graph $G = (V, E)$ was introduced by Gutman and Harary in 1983 and is defined as \[ I(G;x) = \sum_{k=0}^{\alpha(G)}{s_k}x^{k}={s_0}+{s_1}x+{s_2}x^{2}+...+{s_{\alpha(G)}}x^{\alpha(G)}, \] where $s_k$ represents the number of independent sets in $G$ of size $k$. The conjecture made by Alavi, Malde, Schwenk, and Erd\"os in 1987 stated that the independence polynomials of trees are unimodal, and many researchers believed that this conjecture could be strengthened up to its corresponding log-concave version. However, in our paper, we present evidence that contradicts this assumption by introducing infinite families of trees whose independence polynomials are not log-concave.

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Ohr Kadrawi, Vadim E. Levit. 2023-05-02. The independence polynomial of trees is not always log-concave starting from order 26. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.01784

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