Upper Bounds for the Independence Polynomial of Graphs at -1

Abstract

The independence polynomial of a graph G is $$I(G;x)=\sum _{k=0}^{\alpha (G)} s_{k}\cdot x^{k}$$ , where $$s_{k}$$ and $$\alpha (G)$$ denote the number of independent sets of cardinality k and the independence number of G, respectively. We say that a cycle is a $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycle if its length is divisible by 3, otherwise a non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycle. Define $$\phi (G)$$ to be the decycling number of G. Engstrom proved that $$|I(G;-1)| \le 2^{\phi (G)}$$ for any graph G. In this paper, we first prove that $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{\beta (G)}-\beta (G)$$ for graphs with non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycles, where $$\beta (G)$$ is the cyclomatic number of G. Infinitely many examples show that there do exist graphs satisfying $$\beta (G)=\phi (G)$$ and containing non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycles. In such a case, it improves the Engstrom’s result. Furthermore, $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{k}$$ provided that all cycles of G are pairwise disjoint, where k is the number of $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycles of G. This provides a new perspective on estimating the independence polynomial at -1 of many special graphs. In the case G contains no vertices of degree 1, $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{\beta (G)}-1$$ if $$\beta (G)\ge 2$$ , and $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{\beta (G)-1}$$ if G contains a non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycle.