Combinatorics (math.CO)

Abstract: Let $F$ be a graph and $\SPEX (n, F)$ be the class of $n$-vertex graphs which attain the maximum spectral radius and contain no $F$ as a subgraph. Let $\EX (n, F)$ be the family of $n$-vertex graphs which contain maximum number of edges and no $F$ as a subgraph. It is a fundamental problem in spectral extremal graph theory to characterize all graphs $F$ such that $\SPEX (n, F)\subseteq \EX (n, F)$ when $n$ is sufficiently large. Establishing the conjecture of Cioab\u{a}, Desai and Tait [European J. Combin., 2022], Wang, Kang, and Xue [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 2023] prove that: for any graph $F$ such that the graphs in $\EX (n, F)$ are Tur\'{a}n graphs plus $O(1)$ edges, $\SPEX (n, F)\subseteq \EX (n, F)$ for sufficiently large $n$. In this paper, we prove that $\SPEX (n, F)\subseteq \EX (n, F)$ for sufficiently large $n$, where $F$ is an $n$-vertex graph with no isolated vertices and $\Delta (F) \leq \sqrt{n}/40$. We also prove a signless Laplacian spectral radius version of the above theorem. These results give new contribution to the open problem mentioned above, and can be seen as spectral analogs of a theorem of Alon and Yuster [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 2013]. Furthermore, as immediate corollaries, we have tight spectral conditions for the existence of several classes of special graphs, including clique-factors, $k$-th power of Hamilton cycles and $k$-factors in graphs. The first special class of graphs gives a positive answer to a problem of Feng, and the second one extends a previous result of Yan et al.

Abstract: Let $X$ be an $n$-element set. A set-pair system $\mbox{$\cal P$}=\{(A_i,B_i)\}_{1\leq i\leq m}$ is a collection of pairs of disjoint subsets of $X$. It is called skew Bollob\'as system if $A_i\cap B_j\neq \emptyset$ for all $1\leq i<j \leq m$. The best possible inequality $$ \sum_{i=1}^m \frac{1}{{|A_i|+|B_i| \choose |A_i|}}\leq n+1. $$ is established along with some more results of similar flavor.

Abstract: Given a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, its adjacency matrix and degree diagonal matrix are represented by $A(G)$ and $D(G)$, respectively. The $Q$-spectrum of $G$ consists of all the eigenvalues of its signless Laplacian matrix $Q(G)=A(G)+D(G)$ (including the multiplicities). A graph $G$ is known as being determined by its generalized $Q$-spectrum ($DGQS$ for short) if, for any graph $H$, $H$ and $G$ have the same $Q$-spectrum and so do their complements, then $H$ is isomorphic to $G$. In this paper, we present a method to construct $DGQS$ graphs. More specifically, let the matrix $W_{Q}(G)=\left [e,Qe,\dots ,Q^{n-1}e \right ]$ ($e$ denotes the all-one column vector ) be the $Q$-walk matrix of $G$. It is shown that $G\circ P_{k}$ ($k=2,3$) is $DGQS$ if and only if $G$ is $DGQS$ for some specific graphs. This also provides a way to construct $DGQS$ graphs with more vertices by using $DGQS$ graphs with fewer vertices. At the same time, we also prove that $G\circ P_{2}$ is still $DGQS$ under specific circumstances. In particular, on the basis of the above results, we obtain an infinite sequences of $DGQS$ graphs $G\circ P_{k}^{t}$ ($k=2,3;t\ge 1$) for some specific $DGQS$ graph $G$.

Abstract: Divide a deck of $kn$ cards into $k$ equal piles and place them from left to right. The standard shuffle $\sigma$ is performed by picking up the top cards one by one from left to right and repeating until all cards have been picked up. For every permutation $\tau$ of the $k$ piles, use $\rho_{\tau}$ to denote the induced permutation on the $kn$ cards. The shuffle group $G_{k,kn}$ is generated by $\sigma$ and the $k!$ permutations $\rho_{\tau}$. It was conjectured by Cohen et al in 2005 that the shuffle group $G_{k,kn}$ contains $A_{kn}$ if $k\geq3$, $(k,n)\ne\{4,2^f\}$ for any positive integer $f$ and $n$ is not a power of $k$. Very recently, Xia, Zhang and Zhu reduced the proof of the conjecture to that of the $2$-transitivity of the shuffle group and then proved the conjecture under the condition that $k\ge4$ or $k\nmid n$. In this paper, we proved that the group $G_{3,3n}$ is $2$-transitive for any positive integer $n$ which is a multiple of $3$ but not a power of $3$. This result leads to the complete classification of the shuffle groups $G_{k,kn}$ for all $k\ge2$ and $n\ge1$.

Abstract: The Erd\H{o}s-Hajnal conjecture says that for every graph $H$, there exists $c>0$ such that every $H$-free graph $G$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $2^{c\log|G|}$ (a graph is ``$H$-free'' if no induced subgraph is isomorphic to $H$). The conjecture is known when $H$ is a path with at most four vertices, but remains open for longer paths. For the five-vertex path, Blanco and Buci\'c recently proved a bound of $2^{c(\log |G|)^{2/3}}$; for longer paths, the best existing bound is $2^{c(\log|G|\log\log|G|)^{1/2}}$. We prove a much stronger result: for any path $P$, every $P$-free graph $G$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $2^{(\log |G|)^{1-o(1)}}$. We strengthen this further, weakening the hypothesis that $G$ is $P$-free by a hypothesis that $G$ does not contain ``many'' copies of $P$, and strengthening the conclusion, replacing the large clique or stable set outcome with a ``near-polynomial'' version of Nikiforov's theorem.

Abstract: We show that Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graphs $G(n,p)$ with constant density $p<1$ have correspondence chromatic number $O(n/\sqrt{\log n})$; this matches a prediction from linear Hadwiger's conjecture for correspondence coloring. The proof follows from a simple sufficient condition for correspondence colorability in terms of the numbers of independent sets.