ALGEBRAIC COMBINATORICS

no. 2
Arborescences of covering graphs
Chepuri, Sunita1; Dowd, CJ2; Hardt, Andrew3; Michel, Gregory3; Zhang, Sylvester W.3; Zhang, Valerie2
1 University of Michigan Department of Mathematics 2074 East Hall 530 Church St. Ann Arbor MI 48109, USA
2 Harvard University Department of Mathematics Science Center Room 325 1 Oxford Street Cambridge MA 02138, USA
3 University of Minnesota School of Mathematics 127 Vincent Hall 206 Church St. SE Minneapolis MN 55414, USA
Algebraic Combinatorics, Volume 5 (2022) no. 2, pp. 319-346.

An arborescence of a directed graph Γ is a spanning tree directed toward a particular vertex v. The arborescences of a graph rooted at a particular vertex may be encoded as a polynomial A v (Γ) representing the sum of the weights of all such arborescences. The arborescences of a graph and the arborescences of a covering graph Γ ˜ are closely related. Using voltage graphs to construct arbitrary regular covers, we derive a novel explicit formula for the ratio of A v (Γ) to the sum of arborescences in the lift A v ˜ (Γ ˜) in terms of the determinant of Chaiken’s voltage Laplacian matrix, a generalization of the Laplacian matrix. Chaiken’s results on the relationship between the voltage Laplacian and vector fields on Γ are reviewed, and we provide a new proof of Chaiken’s results via a deletion-contraction argument.

Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published online:
DOI: 10.5802/alco.212
Classification: 05C50, 05E18, 05C20, 05C05, 05C22
Keywords: Arborescence, covering graph, voltage graph.
Chepuri, Sunita 1; Dowd, CJ 2; Hardt, Andrew 3; Michel, Gregory 3; Zhang, Sylvester W. 3; Zhang, Valerie 2

1 University of Michigan Department of Mathematics 2074 East Hall 530 Church St. Ann Arbor MI 48109, USA
2 Harvard University Department of Mathematics Science Center Room 325 1 Oxford Street Cambridge MA 02138, USA
3 University of Minnesota School of Mathematics 127 Vincent Hall 206 Church St. SE Minneapolis MN 55414, USA
License: CC-BY 4.0
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights 
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Chepuri, Sunita; Dowd, CJ; Hardt, Andrew; Michel, Gregory; Zhang, Sylvester W.; Zhang, Valerie. Arborescences of covering graphs. Algebraic Combinatorics, Volume 5 (2022) no. 2, pp. 319-346. doi : 10.5802/alco.212. https://alco.centre-mersenne.org/articles/10.5802/alco.212/

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