LOVELY PROFESSIONAL

UNIVERSITY
TERM PAPER
GRAPH THEORY AND
PROBILITY
SUBJECT CODE : MTH-202

TOPIC: HOW LINEAR ALGEBRA IS RELATED

TO GRAPH THEORY

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED

BY:
MSS.GAGANDEEP KAUR GAGAN
ARORA
LOVELY PROFESSIONAL ROLL.NO.
A23
UNIVERSITY REGN NO.
10801964
B.TECH.CSE(MBA)
2ND YEAR 4TH
SEM

Acknowledgement

It is our pleasant duty to express the sense of indevitedness

and gratitude to all those who preserved their cooperation to
make this project a success at the very outset , vole deep
sense of gratitude to northing main project guide
MSS.GAGANDEEP for his guide, encouragement and keen
interest through out the work.

Thanks
CONTENTS
1.INTRODUCTION

2 .BRACHES OF ALGEBRAIC GRAPH THEORY

o 2.1 Using linear algebra

o 2.2 Using group theory
o 2.3 Studying graph invariants

3.BASIC CONCEPT OF GRAPH THEORY

4.HOW LINEAR ALGEBRA RELATED WITH

GRAPH THEORY

5. REFERENCES
1.INTRODUCTION
Algebraic graph theory

Algebraic graph theory is a branch of mathematics in which algebraic methods

are applied to problems about graphs. This is in contrast to geometric,
combinatoric, or algorithmic approaches. There are three main branches of
algebraic graph theory, involving the use of linear algebra, the use of group
theory, and the study of graph invariants.

2. BRANCHES OF ALGEBRIC GRAPH THEORY

(I).Using linear algebra

The first branch of algebraic graph theory involves the study of graphs in
connection with linear algebra. Especially, it studies the spectrum of the
adjacency matrix, the Kirchhoff matrix, or the Laplacian matrix of a graph (this
part of algebraic graph theory is also called spectral graph theory). For the
Petersen graph, for example, the spectrum of the adjacency matrix is
(−2, −2, −2, −2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3). Several theorems relate properties of the
spectrum to other graph properties. As a simple example, a connected graph
with diameter D will have at least D+1 distinct values in its spectrum. Aspects
of graph spectra have been used in analysing the synchronizability of networks.
(II).Using group theory
The second branch of algebraic graph theory involves the study of graphs in
connection to group theory, particularly automorphism groups and geometric
group theory. The focus is placed on various families of graphs based on
symmetry (such as symmetric graphs, vertex-transitive graphs, edge-transitive
graphs, distance-transitive graphs, distance-regular graphs, and strongly regular
graphs), and on the inclusion relationships between these families. Certain of
such categories of graphs are sparse enough that lists of graphs can be drawn
up. By Frucht's theorem, all groups can be represented as the automorphism
group of a connected graph (indeed, of a cubic graph). Another connection with
group theory is that, given any group, symmetrical graphs known as Cayley
graphs can be generated, and these have properties related to the structure of the
group.

A Cayley graph for the alternating group A4, forming a truncated tetrahedron in
three dimensions. All Cayley graphs are vertex-transitive, but some vertex-
transitive graphs (like the Petersen graph) are not Cayley graphs.

A proper vertex colouring of the Petersen graph with 3 colours, the minimum
number possible. According to the chromatic polynomial, there are 120 such
colourings with 3 colours.

This second branch of algebraic graph theory is related to the first, since the
symmetry properties of a graph are reflected in its spectrum. In particular, the
spectrum of a highly symmetrical graph, such as the Petersen graph, has few
distinct values (the Petersen graph has 3, which is the minimum possible, given
its diameter). For Cayley graphs, the spectrum can be related directly to the
structure of the group, in particular to its irreducible characters.

(III).Studying graph invariants

Finally, the third branch of algebraic graph theory concerns algebraic properties
of invariants of graphs, and especially the chromatic polynomial, the Tutte
polynomial and knot invariants. The chromatic polynomial of a graph, for
example, counts the number of its proper vertex colorings. For the Petersen
graph, this polynomial is t(t − 1)(t − 2)(t7 − 12t6 + 67t5 − 230t4 + 529t3 − 814t2 +
775t − 352). In particular, this means that the Petersen graph cannot be properly
coloured with one or two colours, but can be coloured in 120 different ways
with 3 colours. Much work in this area of algebraic graph theory was motivated
by attempts to prove the four colour theorem. However, there are still many
open problems, such as characterizing graphs which have the same chromatic
polynomial.

3.BASIC CONCEPTS OF GRAPH THEORY

Before we make the connection between graph theory and linear algebra, we
start with some basic definitions in graph theory for those of you who are not
familiar with the topic: A graph is a collection of points called vertices

,joinedby lines called edges:

A graph is called directed or a digraph if its edges are directed (that means they
have a specific direction). A path joining two vertices X and Y of a digraph is a
sequence of distinct points (vertices) and directed edges. A path starting and
ending at one vertex P is called a loop at P. For example, in the digraph:

there is more than one path from P1 to P3. One of them consists of three points
P1 P2 P3. A different path from P1 to P3 consists of the points P1 P2 P4 P5 P3.

A graph is called connected if there is a path connecting any two distinct

vertices. It is called disconnected otherwise:

In a graph G, if there exists a path consisting of n edges between two

vertices Pi and Pj, then we say that there exists an n-walks from Pi to Pj. For
 instance, there are three different 2-walks between the points P2 and P7 on
the above graph G1.

4.HOW LINEAR ALGEBRS RELATED TO GRAPH THEORY

As you can expect, graphs can be sometimes very complicated. So one needs to
find more practical ways to represent them. Matrices are a very useful way of
studying graphs, since they turn the picture into numbers, and then one can use
techniques from linear algebra.

Given a graph G with n vertices v1,…,n, we define the adjacency matrix of G

with respect to the enumeration v1,…,vn of the vertices as being the n×n matrix
A=[aij] defined by

For example, for the graph G1 above, the adjacency matrix (with respect to the
enumeration of its vertices) is

Note that for an undirected graph, like G1, the adjacency matrix is symmetric
(that is it is equal to its transpose), but it is not necessarily the case for a digraph
like G2.

Also, note that any square Boolean matrix (two values entries: 0 and 1) with 0’s
on the main diagonal determines a unique digraph.

The following theorem gives one important use of powers of the adjacency
matrix of a graph:
If A is the adjacency matrix of a graph G (with vertices v1,…, vn), the (i, j)-entry
of Ar represents the number of distinct r-walks from vertex vi to vertex vj in the
graph.

Taking the square the matrix M1 above gives

The resulting matrix gives us the number of different paths using two edges
between the vertices of the graph G1. For instance, there are three different 2-
walks between the points P2 and P7 on the above graph; but there is no way to
get from P1 to P5 in two steps.

Example The following diagram represents the route map of a delivery

company:

where A, B, C, D, E are the cities served by the company. The adjacency matrix
M of the above graph is:
so M2 is the matrix:

and M3 is the matrix:

If the company is mostly interested in connections from city A to city B, one can
see that the number of 1-step connections between A and B is 1; the number of
2-step connections is 1, but the number of 3-step connections between the two
cities is 4. These 4 connections can be given explicitly:

1. A→C→E→B

2. A→B→D→B

3. A→D→A→B

4. A→C→A→B
Dominance -directed graph A digraph G is called a dominance-directed graph if
for any pair of distinct vertices u and v of G, either u→v or v→u, but not both
(here the notation u→v means there is an edge from u to v)

The following is an example of a dominance-directed graph:

In the above graph, the vertices A, C and E have the following property: from
each one there is either a 1-step or a 2-step connection to any other vertex in the
graph. In a sports tournament these vertices would correspond to the most
powerful teams in the sense that these teams beat any given team or beat some
other team that beat the given team. The above graph is not unique with this
property. The following theorem guarantees that:

In a dominance-directed graph, we define the power of a vertex, as being the

total number of 1-step and 2-step connections to other vertices. Using the
adjacency matrix M of the graph, one can find the power of a vertex Pi as
follows: the sum of the entries in the ith row of M is the total number of 1-step
connections from Pi to other vertices, and the sum of the entries in the ith row of
M2 is the total number of 2-step connections from Pi to other vertices.
Therefore, the sum of the entries in the ith row of the matrix A=M+ M2 is the
total number of 1-step and 2-step connections from Pi to other vertices.

In a dominance-directed graph, one would like to locate the vertices with the
largest power. To do that, we compute the matrix A=M+ M2 , and then a row of
A with the largest sum of entries corresponds to such a vertex.

Example Suppose that the results of a baseball tournament of five teams A, B,

C, D and E are given by the dominance-directed graph H above. The adjacency
matrix M of H is:

so, the matrix M2 is

and the matrix A=M+M2 is

Since the first row has the largest sum, the vertex A must have a 1-step or 2-step
connection to any other vertex. The ranking of the teams according to the
powers of the corresponding vertices is:

References
1. ^ a b c d e Biggs, Norman (1993). Algebraic Graph Theory (2nd ed.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45897-8.
2. ^ R. Frucht. Graphs of Degree 3 with given abstract group, Canad. J.
Math. 3 1949.
3. ^ *Babai, L (1996), "Automorphism groups, isomorphism,
reconstruction", in Graham, R; Groetschel, M; Lovasz, L, Handbook of
Combinatorics, Elsevier,
http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/files/tr_authentic/TR-94-10.ps

• Godsil, Chris; Royle, Gordon (2001), Algebraic Graph Theory,

Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 207, New York: Springer-Verlag.