The use of Frame’s method for the characteristic polynomials of chemical graphs

Abstract

The evaluation of characteristic polynomials of graphs of any size is an extremely tedious problem because of the combinatorial complexity involved in this problem. While particular elegant methods have been outlined for this problem, a general technique for any graph is usually tedious. We show in this paper that the Frame method for the characteristic polynomial of a matrix is extremely useful and can be applied to graphs containing large numbers of vertices. This method reduces the difficult problem of evaluating the characteristic polynomials to a rather simple problem of matrix products. The coefficients in the characteristic polynomial are generated as traces of matrices generated in a recursive product of two matrices. This method provides for an excellent and a very efficient algorithm for computer evaluation of characteristic polynomials of graphs containing a large number of vertices without having to expand the secular determinant of the matrix associated with the graph. The characteristic polynomials of a number of graphs including that of a square lattice containing 36 vertices are obtained for the first time.