Maximal-clique partitions and the Roller Coaster Conjecture

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• 作者：Jonathan Cutler^a ; ¹ ; ^{jonathan.cutler@montclair.edu" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Luke Pebody^b ; ^{luke@pebody.org" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Independence polynomial ; Well-covered graphs ; Clique coverings
• 刊名：Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：145
• 期：Complete
• 页码：25-35
• 全文大小：313 K

文摘

A graph G is well-covered if every maximal independent set has the same cardinality q  . Let i_k(G)$i_k(G)$ denote the number of independent sets of cardinality k in G  . Brown, Dilcher, and Nowakowski conjectured that the independence sequence (i₀(G),i₁(G),…,i_q(G))$(i_0(G),i_1(G),\dots ,i_q(G))$ was unimodal for any well-covered graph G with independence number q. Michael and Traves disproved this conjecture. Instead they posited the so-called “Roller Coaster” Conjecture: that the terms could be in any specified order for some well-covered graph G with independence number q  . Michael and Traves proved the conjecture for q<8$q<8$ and Matchett extended this to q<12$q<12$.

In this paper, we prove the Roller Coaster Conjecture using a construction of graphs with a property related to that of having a maximal-clique partition. In particular, we show, for all pairs of integers 0≤k<q$0\le k<q$ and positive integers m, that there is a well-covered graph G with independence number q   for which every independent set of size k+1$k+1$ is contained in a unique maximal independent set, but each independent set of size k is contained in at least m distinct maximal independent sets.