For a labeled tree on the vertex set $set{1,2,ldots,n}$, the local direction of each edge $(i,j)$ is from $i$ to $j$ if $i<j$. For a rooted tree, there is also a natural global direction of edges towards the root. The number of edges pointing to a vertex is called its indegree. Thus the local (resp. global) indegree sequence $lambda = 1^{e_1}2^{e_2} ldots$ of a tree on the vertex set $set{1,2,ldots,n}$ is a partition of $n-1$. We construct a bijection from (unrooted) trees to rooted trees such that the local indegree sequence of a (unrooted) tree equals the global indegree sequence of the corresponding rooted tree. Combining with a Prufer-like code for rooted labeled trees, we obtain a bijective proof of a recent conjecture by Cotterill and also solve two open problems proposed by Du and Yin. We also prove a $q$-multisum binomial coefficient identity which confirms another conjecture of Cotterill in a very special case.
The Steiner distance of vertices in a set $S$ is the minimum size of a connected subgraph that contain these vertices. The sum of the Steiner distances over all sets $S$ of cardinality $k$ is called the Steiner $k$-Wiener index and studied as the natural generalization of the famous Wiener index in chemical graph theory. In this paper we study the extremal structures, among trees with a given segment sequence, that maximize or minimize the Steiner $k$-Wiener index. The same extremal problems are also considered for trees with a given number of segments.
A signed graph is a pair $(G,Sigma)$, where $G=(V,E)$ is a graph (in which parallel edges are permitted, but loops are not) with $V={1,ldots,n}$ and $Sigmasubseteq E$. The edges in $Sigma$ are called odd and the other edges of $E$ even. By $S(G,Sigma)$ we denote the set of all symmetric $ntimes n$ matrices $A=[a_{i,j}]$ with $a_{i,j}<0$ if $i$ and $j$ are adjacent and connected by only even edges, $a_{i,j}>0$ if $i$ and $j$ are adjacent and connected by only odd edges, $a_{i,j}in mathbb{R}$ if $i$ and $j$ are connected by both even and odd edges, $a_{i,j}=0$ if $i ot=j$ and $i$ and $j$ are non-adjacent, and $a_{i,i} in mathbb{R}$ for all vertices $i$. The parameters $M(G,Sigma)$ and $xi(G,Sigma)$ of a signed graph $(G,Sigma)$ are the largest nullity of any matrix $Ain S(G,Sigma)$ and the largest nullity of any matrix $Ain S(G,Sigma)$ that has the Strong Arnold Hypothesis, respectively. In a previous paper, we gave a characterization of signed graphs $(G,Sigma)$ with $M(G,Sigma)leq 1$ and of signed graphs with $xi(G,Sigma)leq 1$. In this paper, we characterize the $2$-connected signed graphs $(G,Sigma)$ with $M(G,Sigma)leq 2$ and the $2$-connected signed graphs $(G,Sigma)$ with $xi(G,Sigma)leq 2$.
We consider numbers and sizes of independent sets in graphs with minimum degree at least $d$, when the number $n$ of vertices is large. In particular we investigate which of these graphs yield the maximum numbers of independent sets of different sizes, and which yield the largest random independent sets. We establish a strengthened form of a conjecture of Galvin concerning the first of these topics.