arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Bojan Mohar.
Neumann-Lara (1985) and Škrekovski conjectured that every planar digraph with digirth at least three is 2-colorable. We prove a relaxed version of this conjecture: every planar digraph of digirth at least five is 2-colorable. The result also holds in the setting of list colorings.
Motivated by the problem about HOMO-LUMO separation that arises in mathematical chemistry, Fowler and Pisanski introduced the notion of the HL-index which measures how large in absolute value may be the median eigenvalues of a graph. In this note we provide rather tight lower and upper bounds on the maximum value of the HL-index among all graphs with given average degree. In particular, we determine the exact value of this parameter when restricted to chemically relevant graphs, i.e.\ graphs of maximum degree $3$, and thus answer a question of Fowler and Pisanski. The proof provides additional insight about eigenvalue distribution of large subcubic graphs.
It is proved that every graph embedded on a (non-spherical) surface with non-separating face-width at least $7$ contains a minor isomorphic to $K_6$. It is also shown that face-width four yields the same conclusion for graphs on the projective plane.
For a graph $G$ of order $n$ and with eigenvalues $λ_1\geqslant\cdots\geqslantλ_n$, the HL-index $R(G)$ is defined as $R(G) ={\max}\left\{|λ_{\lfloor(n+1)/2\rfloor}|, |λ_{\lceil(n+1)/2\rceil}|\right\}.$ We show that for every connected bipartite graph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ\geqslant3$, $R(G)\leqslant\sqrt{Δ-2}$ unless $G$ is the the incidence graph of a projective plane of order $Δ-1$. We also present an approach through graph covering to construct infinite families of bipartite graphs with large HL-index.
We resolve two problems of [Cameron, Praeger, and Wormald -- Infinite highly arc transitive digraphs and universal covering digraphs, Combinatorica 1993]. First, we construct a locally finite highly arc-transitive digraph with universal reachability relation. Second, we provide constructions of 2-ended highly arc transitive digraphs where each `building block' is a finite bipartite graph that is not a disjoint union of complete bipartite graphs. This was conjectured impossible in the above paper. We also describe the structure of 2-ended highly arc transitive digraphs in more generality, although complete characterization remains elusive.
It is proved that the median eigenvalues of every connected bipartite graph $G$ of maximum degree at most three belong to the interval $[-1,1]$ with a single exception of the Heawood graph, whose median eigenvalues are $\pm\sqrt{2}$. Moreover, if $G$ is not isomorphic to the Heawood graph, then a positive fraction of its median eigenvalues lie in the interval $[-1,1]$. This surprising result has been motivated by the problem about HOMO-LUMO separation that arises in mathematical chemistry.
We solve two open problems regarding the classification of certain classes of Cayley graphs with integer eigenvalues. We first classify all finite groups that have a "non-trivial" Cayley graph with integer eigenvalues, thus solving a problem proposed by Abdollahi and Jazaeri. The notion of Cayley integral groups was introduced by Klotz and Sander. These are groups for which every Cayley graph has only integer eigenvalues. In the second part of the paper, all Cayley integral groups are determined.
It is shown that a Cayley multigraph over a group $G$ with generating multiset $S$ is integral (i.e., all of its eigenvalues are integers) if $S$ lies in the integral cone over the boolean algebra generated by the normal subgroups of $G$. The converse holds in the case when $G$ is abelian. This in particular gives an alternative, character theoretic proof of a theorem of Bridges and Mena (1982). We extend this result to provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a Cayley multigraph over a Hamiltonian group to be integral, in terms of character sums and the structure of the generating set.
The complete set of minimal obstructions for embedding graphs into the torus is still not determined. In this paper, we present all obstructions for the torus of connectivity 2. Furthermore, we describe the building blocks of obstructions of connectivity 2 for any orientable surface.
Robertson and Seymour proved that the relation of graph immersion is well-quasi-ordered for finite graphs. Their proof uses the results of graph minors theory. Surprisingly, there is a very short proof of the corresponding rough structure theorem for graphs without $K_t$-immersions; it is based on the Gomory-Hu theorem. The same proof also works to establish a rough structure theorem for Eulerian digraphs without $\vec{K}_t$-immersions, where $\vec{K}_t$ denotes the bidirected complete digraph of order $t$.
It is well known that the spectral radius of a tree whose maximum degree is D cannot exceed 2sqrt{D-1}. Similar upper bound holds for arbitrary planar graphs, whose spectral radius cannot exceed sqrt{8D}+10, and more generally, for all d-degenerate graphs, where the corresponding upper bound is sqrt{4dD}. Following this, we say that a graph G is spectrally d-degenerate if every subgraph H of G has spectral radius at most sqrt{d.Delta(H)}. In this paper we derive a rough converse of the above-mentioned results by proving that each spectrally d-degenerate graph G contains a vertex whose degree is at most 4dlog_2(D/d) (if D>=2d). It is shown that the dependence on D in this upper bound cannot be eliminated, as long as the dependence on d is subexponential. It is also proved that the problem of deciding if a graph is spectrally d-degenerate is co-NP-complete.
For an integer $n\geq 2$, let $X_n$ be the Cayley graph on the symmetric group $S_n$ generated by the set of transpositions ${(1 2),(1 3),...,(1 n)}$. It is shown that the spectrum of $X_n$ contains all integers from $-(n-1)$ to $n-1$ (except 0 if $n=2$ or $n=3$).
A graph is near-planar if it can be obtained from a planar graph by adding an edge. We show the surprising fact that it is NP-hard to compute the crossing number of near-planar graphs. A graph is 1-planar if it has a drawing where every edge is crossed by at most one other edge. We show that it is NP-hard to decide whether a given near-planar graph is 1-planar. The main idea in both reductions is to consider the problem of simultaneously drawing two planar graphs inside a disk, with some of its vertices fixed at the boundary of the disk. This leads to the concept of anchored embedding, which is of independent interest. As an interesting consequence we obtain a new, geometric proof of NP-completeness of the crossing number problem, even when restricted to cubic graphs. This resolves a question of Hliněný.
The star chromatic index $χ_s'(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of colors needed to properly color the edges of the graph so that no path or cycle of length four is bi-colored. We obtain a near-linear upper bound in terms of the maximum degree $Δ=Δ(G)$. Our best lower bound on $χ_s'$ in terms of $Δ$ is $2Δ(1+o(1))$ valid for complete graphs. We also consider the special case of cubic graphs, for which we show that the star chromatic index lies between 4 and 7 and characterize the graphs attaining the lower bound. The proofs involve a variety of notions from other branches of mathematics and may therefore be of certain independent interest.
A class of graphs that lies strictly between the classes of graphs of genus (at most) $k-1$ and $k$ is studied. For a fixed orientable surface $S_k$ of genus $k$, let $A_{xy}^k$ be the minor-closed class of graphs with terminals $x$ and $y$ that either embed into $S_{k-1}$ or admit an embedding $Π$ into $S_k$ such that there is a $Π$-face where $x$ and $y$ appear twice in the alternating order. In this paper, the obstructions for the classes $A_{xy}^k$ are studied. In particular, the complete list of obstructions for $A_{xy}^1$ is presented.
A graph is 1-planar if it can be drawn on the plane so that each edge is crossed by no more than one other edge (and any pair of crossing edges cross only once). A non-1-planar graph $G$ is minimal if the graph $G-e$ is 1-planar for every edge $e$ of $G$. We construct two infinite families of minimal non-1-planar graphs and show that for every integer $n > 62$, there are at least $2^{(n-54)/4}$ nonisomorphic minimal non-1-planar graphs of order $n$. It is also proved that testing 1-planarity is NP-complete.
Let $k$ be an integer. We prove a rough structure theorem for separations of order at most $k$ in finite and infinite vertex transitive graphs. Let $G = (V,E)$ be a vertex transitive graph, let $A \subseteq V$ be a finite vertex-set with $|A| \le |V|/2$ and $|\{v \in V \setminus A : {$u \sim v$ for some $u \in A$} \}|\le k$. We show that whenever the diameter of $G$ is at least $31(k+1)^2$, either $|A| \le 2k^3+k^2$, or $G$ has a ring-like structure (with bounded parameters), and $A$ is efficiently contained in an interval. This theorem may be viewed as a rough characterization, generalizing an earlier result of Tindell, and has applications to the study of product sets and expansion in groups.
Brooks' Theorem states that a connected graph $G$ of maximum degree $Δ$ has chromatic number at most $Δ$, unless $G$ is an odd cycle or a complete graph. A result of Johansson (1996) shows that if $G$ is triangle-free, then the chromatic number drops to $O(Δ/ \log Δ)$. In this paper, we derive a weak analog for the chromatic number of digraphs. We show that every (loopless) digraph $D$ without directed cycles of length two has chromatic number $χ(D) \leq (1-e^{-13}) \tildeΔ$, where $\tildeΔ$ is the maximum geometric mean of the out-degree and in-degree of a vertex in $D$, when $\tildeΔ$ is sufficiently large. As a corollary it is proved that there exists an absolute constant $α< 1$ such that $χ(D) \leq α(\tildeΔ + 1)$ for every $\tildeΔ > 2$.