Dong, F. M.

Let G be a connected graph with vertex set V (G). A set S of vertices in G is called a weakly connected dominating set of G if (i) S is a dominating set of G and (ii) the graph obtained from G by removing all edges joining two vertices in V (G) \ S is connected. A weakly connected dominating set S of G is said to be minimum or a γw-set if |S| is minimum among all weakly connected dominating sets of G. We say that G is γw-unique if it has a unique γw-set. Recently, a constructive characterisation of γw-unique trees was obtained by Lemanska and Raczek [Czechoslovak Math. J. 59 (134) (2009), 95–100]. A graph is said to be cycle-disjoint if no two cycles in G have a vertex in common. In this paper, we extend the above result on trees by establishing a constructive characterisation of γw-unique cycle-disjoint graphs.

The chromatic polynomial of a simple graph G with n > 0 vertices is a polynomial Σnk =1α(G, k)(x)k of degree n, where (x)k = x(x−1) . . . (x−k+1) and α(G, k) is real for all k. The adjoint polynomial of G is defined to be Σnk=1α(G, k)μk, where G is the complement of G. We find the zeros of the adjoint polynomials of paths and cycles.

Let G be a bridgeless graph. In 2011 Kung and Royle showed that all roots of the ow polynomial F(G; ) of G are integers if and only if G is the dual of a chordal and plane graph. In this article, we study whether a bridgeless graph G for which F(G; ) has real roots only must be the dual of some chordal and plane graph. We conclude that the answer of this problem for G is positive if and only if F(G; ) does not have any real root in the interval (1; 2). We also prove that for any non-separable and 3-edge connected G, if G - e is also non-separable for each edge e in G and every 3-edge-cut of G consists of edges incident with some vertex of G, then all roots of P(G; ) are real if and only if either G 2 fL;Z3;K4g or F(G; ) contains at least 9 real roots in the interval (1; 2), where L is the graph with one vertex and one loop and Z3 is the graph with two vertices and three parallel edges joining these two vertices.

For any graph G, let W(G) be the set of vertices in G of degrees larger than 3. We show that for any bridgeless graph G, if W(G) is dominated by some component of G-W(G), then F(G,λ ) has no roots in (1; 2), where F(G,λ ) is the flow polynomial of G. This result generalizes the known result that F(G,λ ) has no roots in (1, 2) whenever |W(G)| ≤2. We also give some constructions to generate graphs whose flow polynomials have no roots in (1, 2).

For a connected graph G and any non-empty S ⊆ V (G), S is called a weakly connected dominating set of G if the subgraph obtained from G by removing all edges each joining any two vertices in V (G) \ S is connected. The weakly connected domination number γw(G) is defined to be the minimum integer k with |S| = k for some weakly connected dominating set S of G. In this note, we extend a result on the lower bound for the weakly connected domination number γw(G) on trees to cycle-e-disjoint graphs, i.e., graphs in which no cycles share a common edge. More specifically, we show that if G is a connected cycle-e-disjoint graph, then γw(G) ≥ (|V (G)| − v1(G) − nc(G) − noc(G) + 1)/2, where nc(G) is the number of cycles in G, noc(G) is the number of odd cycles in G and v1(G) is the number of vertices of degree 1 in G. The graphs for which equality holds are also characterised.

Let P be an edge-property of graphs. For any graph G we construct a polynomial Ψ(G, η,P), in an indeterminate η, in which the coefficient of ηr for any r ≥ 0 gives the number of subsets of E(G) that have cardinality r and satisfy P. An example is the well known matching polynomial of a graph. After studying the properties of Ψ(G, η,P) in general, we specialise to two particular edge-properties: that of being an edge-covering and that of inducing an acyclic subgraph. The resulting polynomials, called the edge-cover and acyclic polynomials respectively, are studied and recursive formulae for computing them are derived. As examples we calculate these polynomials for paths and cycles.

Two graphs are defined to be adjointly equivalent if their complements are chromatically equivalent. We study the properties of two invariants under adjoint equivalence.