This paper discusses a flaw in Murasugi–Przytycki’s Memoir ‘An index of a graph with applications to knot theory’ [Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 106 (1993)]. We point out and partly fix a gap occurring in the proof of Murasugi–Przytycki’s braid index inequalities involving the graph index. We explain why their notion of index fails to precisely reflect the reduction of Seifert circles by their diagram move, and redefine the index to account for that discrepancy.

A scale-free tree with the parameter β is very close to a star if β is just a bit larger than −1, whereas it is close to a random recursive tree if β is very large. Through the Zagreb index, we consider the whole scene of the evolution of the scale-free trees model as β goes from −1 to + ∞. The critical values of β are shown to be the first several nonnegative integer numbers. We get the first two moments and the asymptotic behaviors of this index of a scale-free tree for all β. The generalized plane-oriented recursive trees model is also mentioned in passing, as well as the Gordon-Scantlebury and the Platt indices, which are closely related to the Zagreb index.

Results of Fowler and Sims show that every k-graph is completely determined by its k-coloured skeleton and collection of commuting squares. Here we give an explicit description of the k-graph associated with a given skeleton and collection of squares and show that two k-graphs are isomorphic if and only if there is an isomorphism of their skeletons which preserves commuting squares. We use this to prove directly that each k-graph Λ is isomorphic to the quotient of the path category of its skeleton by the equivalence relation determined by the commuting squares, and show that this extends to a homeomorphism of infinite-path spaces when the k-graph is row finite with no sources. We conclude with a short direct proof of the characterization, originally due to Robertson and Sims, of simplicity of the C*-algebra of a row-finite k-graph with no sources.

A graph $\mit{\Gamma} $ is called $1$-regular if $ \mathsf{Aut} \mit{\Gamma} $ acts regularly on its arcs. In this paper, a classification of $1$-regular Cayley graphs of valency $7$ is given; in particular, it is proved that there is only one core-free graph up to isomorphism.

For positive integers $p$ and $q$, let ${ \mathcal{G} }_{p, q} $ be a class of graphs such that $\vert E(G)\vert \leq p\vert V(G)\vert - q$ for every $G\in { \mathcal{G} }_{p, q} $. In this paper, we consider the sum of the $k\mathrm{th} $ powers of the degrees of the vertices of a graph $G\in { \mathcal{G} }_{p, q} $ with $\Delta (G)\geq 2p$. We obtain an upper bound for this sum that is linear in ${\Delta }^{k- 1} $. These graphs include the planar, 1-planar, $t$-degenerate, outerplanar, and series-parallel graphs.

The almost-sure connectivity of the Euclidean minimal spanning forest MSF(X) on a homogeneous Poisson point process X ⊂ ℝd is an open problem for dimension d>2. We introduce a descending family of graphs (G n )n ≥2 that can be seen as approximations to the MSF in the sense that MSF(X)=∩n=2 ∞G n (X). For n=2, one recovers the relative neighborhood graph or, in other words, the β-skeleton with β=2. We show that almost-sure connectivity of G n (X) holds for all n≥2, all dimensions d≥2, and also point processes X more general than the homogeneous Poisson point process. In particular, we show that almost-sure connectivity holds if certain continuum percolation thresholds are strictly positive or, more generally, if almost surely X does not admit generalized descending chains.

In this short paper, we show that, with three exceptions, if the Wiener index of a connected graph of order $n$ is at most $(n+ 5)(n- 2)/ 2$, then it is traceable.

We construct two bases for each cluster algebra coming from a triangulated surface without punctures. We work in the context of a coefficient system coming from a full-rank exchange matrix, such as principal coefficients.

After summarizing from previous papers the definitions of the concepts associated with nets, i.e. triples of 6-transpositions in the Monster up to braiding, we give some results.

Rooted monounary algebras can be considered as an algebraic counterpart of directed rooted trees. We work towards a characterization of the lattice of compatible quasiorders by describing its join- and meet-irreducible elements. We introduce the limit $\cB _\infty $ of all $d$-dimensional Boolean cubes $\Two ^d$ as a monounary algebra; then the natural order on $\Two ^d$ is meet-irreducible. Our main result is that any completely meet-irreducible quasiorder of a rooted algebra is a homomorphic preimage of the natural partial order (or its inverse) of a suitable subalgebra of $\cB _\infty $. For a partial order, it is known that complete meet-irreducibility means that the corresponding partially ordered structure is subdirectly irreducible. For a rooted monounary algebra it is shown that this property implies that the unary operation has finitely many nontrivial kernel classes and its graph is a binary tree.

Consider a random graph where the mean degree is given and fixed. In this paper we derive the maximal size of the largest connected component in the graph. We also study the related question of the largest possible outbreak size of an epidemic occurring ‘on’ the random graph (the graph describing the social structure in the community). More precisely, we look at two different classes of random graphs. First, the Poissonian random graph in which each node i is given an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) random weight X i with E(Xi )=µ, and where there is an edge between i and j with probability 1-e-X iX j/(µ n), independently of other edges. The second model is the thinned configuration model in which the n vertices of the ground graph have i.i.d. ground degrees, distributed as D, with E(D) = µ. The graph of interest is obtained by deleting edges independently with probability 1-p. In both models the fraction of vertices in the largest connected component converges in probability to a constant 1-q, where q depends on X or D and p. We investigate for which distributions X and D with given µ and p, 1-q is maximized. We show that in the class of Poissonian random graphs, X should have all its mass at 0 and one other real, which can be explicitly determined. For the thinned configuration model, D should have all its mass at 0 and two subsequent positive integers.

Let $R$ be a commutative ring. The regular digraph of ideals of $R$, denoted by $\Gamma (R)$, is a digraph whose vertex set is the set of all nontrivial ideals of $R$ and, for every two distinct vertices $I$ and $J$, there is an arc from $I$ to $J$ whenever $I$ contains a nonzero divisor on $J$. In this paper, we study the connectedness of $\Gamma (R)$. We also completely characterise the diameter of this graph and determine the number of edges in $\Gamma (R)$, whenever $R$ is a finite direct product of fields. Among other things, we prove that $R$ has a finite number of ideals if and only if $\mathrm {N}_{\Gamma (R)}(I)$ is finite, for all vertices $I$ in $\Gamma (R)$, where $\mathrm {N}_{\Gamma (R)}(I)$ is the set of all adjacent vertices to $I$ in $\Gamma (R)$.

Let $G$ be a general weighted graph (with possible self-loops) on $n$ vertices and $\lambda _1,\lambda _2,\ldots ,\lambda _n$ be its eigenvalues. The Estrada index of $G$ is a graph invariant defined as $EE=\sum _{i=1}^ne^{\lambda _i}$. We present a generic expression for $EE$ based on weights of short closed walks in $G$. We establish lower and upper bounds for $EE$in terms of low-order spectral moments involving the weights of closed walks. A concrete example of calculation is provided.

We present and investigate a general model for inhomogeneous random digraphs with labeled vertices, where the arcs are generated independently, and the probability of inserting an arc depends on the labels of its endpoints and on its orientation. For this model, the critical point for the emergence of a giant component is determined via a branching process approach.

The chromatic polynomial P(G,λ) gives the number of ways a graph G can be properly coloured in at most λ colours. This polynomial has been extensively studied in both combinatorics and statistical physics, but there has been little work on its algebraic properties. This paper reports a systematic study of the Galois groups of chromatic polynomials. We give a summary of the Galois groups of all chromatic polynomials of strongly non-clique-separable graphs of order at most 10 and all chromatic polynomials of non-clique-separable θ-graphs of order at most 19. Most of these chromatic polynomials have symmetric Galois groups. We give five infinite families of graphs: one of these families has chromatic polynomials with a dihedral Galois group and two of these families have chromatic polynomials with cyclic Galois groups. This includes the first known infinite family of graphs that have chromatic polynomials with the cyclic Galois group of order 3.

We find the joint distribution of the lengths of the shortest paths from a specified node to all other nodes in a network in which the edge lengths are assumed to be independent heterogeneous exponential random variables. We also give an efficient way to simulate these lengths that requires only one generated exponential per node, as well as efficient procedures to use the simulated data to estimate quantities of the joint distribution.

The bipartite divisor graph B(X), for a set Xof positive integers, and some of its properties have recently been studied. We construct the bipartite divisor graph for the product of subsets of positive integers and investigate some of its properties. We also give some applications in group theory.

Let G be a finite connected graph of order n, minimum degree δ and diameter d. The degree distance D′(G) of G is defined as ∑ {u,v}⊆V (G)(deg u+deg v) d(u,v), where deg w is the degree of vertex w and d(u,v)denotes the distance between u and v. In this paper, we find an asymptotically sharp upper bound on the degree distance in terms of order, minimum degree and diameter. In particular, we prove that

\[ D^\prime (G)\le \frac {1}{4}\,dn\biggl (n-\frac {d}{3}(\delta +1)\biggr )^2+O(n^3). \]

We consider a multivariate distributional recursion of sum type, as arises in the probabilistic analysis of algorithms and random trees. We prove an upper tail bound for the solution using Chernoff's bounding technique by estimating the Laplace transform. The problem is traced back to the corresponding problem for binary search trees by stochastic domination. The result obtained is applied to the internal path length and Wiener index of random b-ary recursive trees with weighted edges and random linear recursive trees. Finally, lower tail bounds for the Wiener index of these trees are given.

We show that in preferential attachment models with power-law exponent τ ∈ (2, 3) the distance between randomly chosen vertices in the giant component is asymptotically equal to (4 + o(1))log log N / (-log(τ − 2)), where N denotes the number of nodes. This is twice the value obtained for the configuration model with the same power-law exponent. The extra factor reveals the different structure of typical shortest paths in preferential attachment graphs.