Research

Hadamard Diagonalizable Graphs

The Discrete Mathematics group is working on Hadamard diagonalizable matrices and Hadamard diagonalizable graphs this Fall 2018.

Here are the notes and the gap code from October, 10.

Past Project: The Minimum Rank of a Graph -- Fall 2010

Both Fatemeh and Shaun have made comprehensive notes on this project from last term in case anyone needs a review! Here they are: Shaun's notes, Fatemeh's first set of notes and Fatemeh's secend set of notes

Here is an update on the Open Problems .

Here the some Open Problems that we have compiled. We will start working on the most appealing of these Friday November 19th.


During the Fall 2010 semester, Shaun Fallat will lead this group through the topic of the minimum rank of a graph. In general the setting is as follows: The minimum rank problem for a simple graph is to determine the minimum rank among, for example, all real symmetric matrices whose zero-nonzero pattern of off-diagonal entries is described by a given simple graph G. We note that the maximum rank is always the order of G, and it is straightforward that any rank between the minimum and full rank may be achieved. It turns out, that the zero-nonzero pattern described by a graph has significant influence on the minimum rank.
Example: A matrix associated with a path on n vertices is a symmetric tridiagonal matrix (up to labeling) with nonzero sub- and super-diagonal and thus has minimum rank n-1, whereas the complete graph on n vertices has minimum rank 1. The plan is to provide an introduction to this topic, including an overview of the notation and a survey of a number of important related results. The goal after a few introductory lectures would be for the group to work on some relevant open problems that are of current interest (these will be discussed within the group).

A sample of applications in this area:

    - spectra of graphs and combinatorial inverse eigenvalue problems
    - singular graphs, nullity of the adjacency matrix;
    - biclique decompositions and the biclique partition number (Graham-Pollack Theorem);
    - Hermitian rank and inertia;
    - Lovasz theta function and orthonormal labellings of graphs.
    - computation complexity

A short list of relevant references are listed below along with linked pdf files:

Minimum Rank of Graphs

  1. AIM minimum rank-special graphs work group, 2008 Zero forcing sets and the minimum rank of graphs
  2. Barioli and Fallat, 2004 On two conjectures regarding an inverse eigenvalue problem for acyclic symmetric matrices
  3. Barioli and Fallat, 2007 On the Minimum Rank of the Join of Graphs and Decomposable Graphs
  4. Barioli, Fallat, and Hogben, 2004 Computation of minimal rank and path cover number for certain graphs
  5. Barioli, Fallat, and Hogben, 2005 On the difference between the maximum multiplicity and path cover number for tree-like graphs
  6. Barioli, Fallat, and Hogben, 2005 A variant on the graph parameters of Colin de Verdiere: implications to the minimum rank of graphs
  7. Barrett, van der Holst, and Loewy, 2004 Graphs whose minimal rank is two
  8. Berman,  Friedland, Hogben, Rothblum, and Shader, 2008  An upper bound for the minimum rank of a graph
  9. Fallat and Hogben, 2007 The minimum rank of symmetric matrices described by a graph: a survey
  10. van der Holst, 2008 Three-connected graphs whose maximum corank is at most three
  11. van der Holst, Lovasz, and Schrijver, 1999 The Colin de Verdiere graph parameter
  12. Johnson and Leal Duarte, 1999 The maximum multiplicity of an eigenvalue in a matrix whose graph is a tree 

Minimum Semidefinite Rank of Graphs

  1. van der Holst, 2003 Graphs whose positive semi-definite matrices have nullity at most two
  2. Jiang, Mitchell, Narayan, 2008  matrix digraphs and minimum semidefinite rank
  3. Lovasz, Saks, Schrijver, 1989 Orthogonal Representations and Connectivity of Graphs, 2000 Correction
  4. Narayan et al, 2008  On minimum rank of positive semi-definite matrices with a given graph

Past Projects

Sample Compression

We currently studying a problem that is motivated by a problem in theoretical computer science. The problem has to do with sample compression and VC-Dimension. Here is an introduction to the problem.

Generalized Covering Designs

Here is the reference to our paper on this topic. Generalized covering designs and clique coverings (with Andrea Burgess, Michael Cavers and Karen Meagher), Journal of Combinatorial Designs 19 (2011), 378–406; doi: 10.1002/jcd.20288 (arXiv).

Covering Arrays

The question we asked is the following: Is it possible to get good bounds on small covering arrays using eigenvalues of non-uniform partition graphs?

We were able to find several eigenvalues for these graph and using these se were able to find some bounds on the sizes of small covering array. Unfortunately, the bounds we found are not the best known bounds. A summary of this work is available here. This project will likely be continued at some point. One approach would be to develop a better method to find eigenvalues with the goal of finding smaller eigenvalues that will give better bounds. We did return to the study of covering arrays. Our goal was to prove that for small covering arrays (specifically, arrays with alphabet size k and between k^2 and k^2+k columns) that the optimal arrays can be achieved using balanced covering arrays. We have an approach which involves finding a clique partition for a certain multipartite graph, namely the graph K_{k,2,2,...,2}. Unfortunately we were unable to find appropriate bounds on the size of a clique partition for this graph. If you have an ideas let use know!

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