Counting independent sets in cubic graphs of given girth

We prove a tight upper bound on the independence polynomial (and total number of independent sets) of cubic graphs of girth at least 5. The bound is achieved by unions of the Heawood graph, the point/line incidence graph of the Fano plane. We also give a tight lower bound on the total number of inde...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Perarnau Llobet, Guillem|||0000-0002-1953-9511, Perkins, Will
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/133725
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/133725
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jctb.2018.04.009
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Graph theory
independent sets
independence polynomial
hard-core model
Petersen graph
Heawood graph
occupancy fraction
Grafs, Teoria de
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística::Matemàtica discreta::Teoria de grafs
Descripción
Sumario:We prove a tight upper bound on the independence polynomial (and total number of independent sets) of cubic graphs of girth at least 5. The bound is achieved by unions of the Heawood graph, the point/line incidence graph of the Fano plane. We also give a tight lower bound on the total number of independent sets of triangle-free cubic graphs. This bound is achieved by unions of the Petersen graph. We conjecture that in fact all Moore graphs are extremal for the scaled number of independent sets in regular graphs of a given minimum girth, maximizing this quantity if their girth is even and minimizing if odd. The Heawood and Petersen graphs are instances of this conjecture, along with complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, and cycles.