Let $G$ be a simple graph of order n. The domination polynomial of G is the polynomial D(G,x) =\sum d(G, i)x^i, where d(G,i) is the number of dominating sets of G of size i. Every root of D(G,x) is called the domination root of G. It is clear that (0,\infty) is zero free interval for domination polynomial of a graph. It is interesting to investigate graphs which have complex domination roots with positive real parts. In this paper, we first investigate complexity of the domination polynomial at specific points. Then we present and investigate some families of graphs whose complex domination roots have positive real part.

Saeid Alikhani Emeric Deutsch

Let $e^{2\pi i\Q}$ denote the set of roots of unity. We consider subsets $E\subset e^{2\pi i\Q}$ that are quasi-independent or algebraically independent (as subsets of the discrete plane). A bijective map on $e^{2\pi i\Q}$ preserves the algebraically independent sets iff it preserves the quasi-independent sets, and those maps are characterized. The effect on the size of quasi-independent sets in the $n^{th}$ roots of unity $Z_n$ of increasing a prime factor of $n$ is studied.

L. Thomas Ramsey Colin C. Graham

The Wiener polynomial of a connected graph $G$ is defined as $W(G;x)=\sum x^{d(u,v)}$, where $d(u,v)$ denotes the distance between $u$ and $v$, and the sum is taken over all unordered pairs of distinct vertices of $G$. We examine the nature and location of the roots of Wiener polynomials of graphs, and in particular trees. We show that while the maximum modulus among all roots of Wiener polynomials of graphs of order $n$ is $\binom{n}{2}-1$, the maximum modulus among all roots of Wiener polynomials of trees of order $n$ grows linearly in $n$. We prove that the closure of the collection of real roots of Wiener polynomials of all graphs is precisely $(-\infty, 0]$, while in the case of trees, it contains $(-\infty, -1]$. Finally, we demonstrate that the imaginary parts and (positive) real parts of roots of Wiener polynomials can be arbitrarily large.

Jason I. Brown Ortrud Oellermann Lucas Mol

If for any k the k-th coefficient of a polynomial I(G;x)is equal to the number of stable sets of cardinality k in graph G, then it is called the independence polynomial of G (Gutman and Harary, 1983). A graph G is very well-covered (Favaron, 1982) if it has no isolated vertices, its order equals 2*alpha(G), where alpha(G) is the size of a maximum stable set, and it is well-covered (i.e., all its maximal independent sets are of the same size, Plummer, 1970). For instance, appending a single pendant edge to each vertex of G yields a very well-covered graph, which we denote by G*. Under certain conditions, any well-covered graph equals G* for some G (Finbow, Hartnell and Nowakowski, 1993). The root of the smallest modulus of the independence polynomial of any graph is real (Brown, Dilcher, and Nowakowski, 2000). The location of the roots of the independence polynomial in the complex plane, and the multiplicity of the root of the smallest modulus are investigated in a number of articles. In this paper we establish formulae connecting the coefficients of I(G;x) and I(G*;x), which allow us to show that the number of roots of I(G;x) is equal to the number of roots of I(G*;x) different from -1, which appears as a root of multiplicity alpha(G*)- alpha(G) for I(G*;x). We also prove that the real roots of I(G*;x) are in [-1,-1/(2*alpha(G*)), while for a general graph of order n we show that its roots lie in |z| > 1/(2n-1). Using the properties of the roots of the independence polynomial, we demonstrate that the independence polynomial distinguishes well-covered spiders (well-covered trees with at most one vertex of degree greater than two) among general well-covered trees.

Vadim E. Levit Eugen Mandrescu

The \emph{Wiener polynomial} of a connected graph $G$ is the polynomial $W(G;x) = \sum_{i=1}^{D(G)} d_i(G)x^i$ where $D(G)$ is the diameter of $G$, and $d_i(G)$ is the number of pairs of vertices at distance $i$ from each other. We examine the roots of Wiener polynomials of trees. We prove that the collection of real Wiener roots of trees is dense in $(-\infty, 0]$, and the collection of complex Wiener roots of trees is dense in $\mathbb C$. We also prove that the maximum modulus among all Wiener roots of trees of order $n \ge 31$ is between $2n-15$ and $2n-16$, and we determine the unique tree that achieves the maximum for $n \ge 31$. Finally, we find trees of arbitrarily large diameter whose Wiener roots are all real.

Danielle Wang

Given a natural number $n \geq 4$ we show that there exists infinitely many polynomials $f_{n}(x):= \prod_{i=1}^{n} (x^{2} - a_{i})$ such that (i) $f_{n}(x)$ has a root modulo every positive integer, (ii) $f_{n}(x)$ has no rational roots, and (iii) every proper divisor of $f_{n}(x)$ fails to have root modulo some positive integer. We exhibit a process to explicitly construct such $f_{n}$ and this process demonstrates that the set of natural numbers $a_{n}$, such that the polynomial $f_{n}(x):= \prod_{i=1}^{n} (x^{2} - a_{i})$ satisfies the properties (i), (ii) and (iii), is of positive asymptotic density in $\mathbb{N}$.

Bhawesh Mishra

Let $p:\mathbb{C} \rightarrow \mathbb{C}$ be a polynomial. The Gauss-Lucas theorem states that its critical points, $p'(z) = 0$, are contained in the convex hull of its roots. We prove a stability version whose simplest form is as follows: suppose $p$ has $n+m$ roots where $n$ are inside the unit disk, $$ \max_{1 \leq i \leq n}{|a_i|} \leq 1, \quad \mbox{and $m$ are outside} \quad \min_{n+1 \leq i \leq n+m}{ |a_i|} \geq d > 1 + \frac{2 m}{n},$$ then $p'$ has $n-1$ roots inside the unit disk and $m$ roots at distance at least $(dn - m)/(n+m) > 1$ from the origin and the involved constants are sharp. We also discuss a pairing result: in the setting above, for $n$ sufficiently large each of the $m$ roots has a critical point at distance $\sim n^{-1}$.

Stefan Steinerberger

While much attention has been directed to the maximum modulus and maximum real part of chromatic roots of graphs of order $n$ (that is, with $n$ vertices), relatively little is known about the maximum imaginary part of such graphs. We prove that the maximum imaginary part can grow linearly in the order of the graph. We also show that for any fixed $p \in (0,1)$, almost every random graph $G$ in the Erd\"os-R\'enyi model has a non-real root.

Jason I. Brown David G. Wagner

We give an estimate for the width of the congruence subgroup $\mathrm{SL}(n,O_S,I)$ in Tits--Vaserstein generators, where $O_S$ is a localisation of the ring of integers in a number field $K$. We assume that either $K$ has a real embedding, or the ideal $I$ is prime to the number of roots of unity in $K$.

Pavel Gvozdevsky

Let $\Omega$ be a matrix with entries $a_{i,j}=\omega^{ij},$ $1\leq i,j \leq n,$ where $\omega=e^{2\pi \sqrt{-1}/n},$ $n\in \mathbb N.$ The Chebotarev theorem states that if $n$ is a prime then any minor of $\Omega$ is non-zero. In this note we provide an analogue of this statement for composite $n.$

F. Pakovich