Symbolic powers of vertex cover ideals

Let [Formula: see text] be a finite simple graph and [Formula: see text] denote its vertex cover ideal in a polynomial ring over a field [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we show that all symbolic powers of vertex cover ideals of certain vertex-decomposable graphs have linear quotients. Using these results, we give various conditions on a subset [Formula: see text] of the vertices of [Formula: see text] so that all symbolic powers of vertex cover ideals of [Formula: see text], obtained from [Formula: see text] by adding a whisker to each vertex in [Formula: see text], have linear quotients. For instance, if [Formula: see text] is a vertex cover of [Formula: see text], then all symbolic powers of [Formula: see text] have linear quotients. Moreover, we compute the Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity of symbolic powers of certain vertex cover ideals.

Edge-partitioning graphs into regular and locally irregular components

International audience A graph is locally irregular if every two adjacent vertices have distinct degrees. Recently, Baudon et al. introduced the notion of decomposition into locally irregular subgraphs. They conjectured that for almost every graph $G$, there exists a minimum integer $\chi^{\prime}_{\mathrm{irr}}(G)$ such that $G$ admits an edge-partition into $\chi^{\prime}_{\mathrm{irr}}(G)$ classes, each of which induces a locally irregular graph. In particular, they conjectured that $\chi^{\prime}_{\mathrm{irr}}(G) \leq 3$ for every $G$, unless $G$ belongs to a well-characterized family of non-decomposable graphs. This conjecture is far from being settled, as notably (1) no constant upper bound on$\chi^{\prime}_{\mathrm{irr}}(G)$ is known for $G$ bipartite, and (2) no satisfactory general upper bound on $\chi^{\prime}_{\mathrm{irr}}(G)$ is known. We herein investigate the consequences on this question of allowing a decomposition to include regular components as well. As a main result, we prove that every bipartite graph admits such a decomposition into at most $6$ subgraphs. This result implies that every graph $G$ admits a decomposition into at most $6(\lfloor \mathrm{log} \chi (G) \rfloor +1)$ subgraphs whose components are regular or locally irregular.