A sharp upper bound for the number of connected sets in any grid graph

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ma, Hongxia, Jin, Xian'an, Yang, Weiling, Zhang, Meiqiao
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866908299050352640
author Ma, Hongxia
Jin, Xian'an
Yang, Weiling
Zhang, Meiqiao
author_facet Ma, Hongxia
Jin, Xian'an
Yang, Weiling
Zhang, Meiqiao
contents A connected set in a graph is a subset of vertices whose induced subgraph is connected. Although counting the number of connected sets in a graph is generally a \#P-complete problem, it remains an active area of research. In 2020, Vince posed the problem of finding a formula for the number of connected sets in the $(n\times n)$-grid graph. In this paper, we establish a sharp upper bound for the number of connected sets in any grid graph by using multistep recurrence formulas, which further derives enumeration formulas for the numbers of connected sets in $(3\times n)$- and $(4\times n)$-grid graphs, thus solving a special case of the general problem posed by Vince. In the process, we also determine the number of connected sets of $K_{m}\times P_{n}$ by employing the transfer matrix method, where $K_{m}\times P_{n}$ is the Cartesian product of the complete graph of order $m$ and the path of order $n$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_02309
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A sharp upper bound for the number of connected sets in any grid graph
Ma, Hongxia
Jin, Xian'an
Yang, Weiling
Zhang, Meiqiao
Combinatorics
A connected set in a graph is a subset of vertices whose induced subgraph is connected. Although counting the number of connected sets in a graph is generally a \#P-complete problem, it remains an active area of research. In 2020, Vince posed the problem of finding a formula for the number of connected sets in the $(n\times n)$-grid graph. In this paper, we establish a sharp upper bound for the number of connected sets in any grid graph by using multistep recurrence formulas, which further derives enumeration formulas for the numbers of connected sets in $(3\times n)$- and $(4\times n)$-grid graphs, thus solving a special case of the general problem posed by Vince. In the process, we also determine the number of connected sets of $K_{m}\times P_{n}$ by employing the transfer matrix method, where $K_{m}\times P_{n}$ is the Cartesian product of the complete graph of order $m$ and the path of order $n$.
title A sharp upper bound for the number of connected sets in any grid graph
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.02309