Ars Combinatoria
ISSN 0381-7032 (print), 2817-5204 (online)
Ars Combinatoria is the oldest Canadian journal of combinatorics, established in 1976, dedicated to advancing combinatorial mathematics through the publication of high-quality, peer-reviewed research papers. Over the decades, it has built a strong international reputation and continues to serve as a leading platform for significant contributions to the field.
Open Access: The journal follows the Diamond Open Access model—completely free for both authors and readers, with no article processing charges (APCs).
Publication Frequency: From 2024 onward, Ars Combinatoria publishes four issues annually—in March, June, September, and December.
Scope: Publishes research in all areas of combinatorics, including graph theory, design theory, enumeration, algebraic combinatorics, combinatorial optimization and related fields.
Indexing & Abstracting: Indexed in MathSciNet, Zentralblatt MATH, and EBSCO, ensuring wide visibility and scholarly reach.
Rapid Publication: Submissions are processed efficiently, with accepted papers published promptly in the next available issue.
Print & Online Editions: Issues are available in both print and online formats to serve a broad readership.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 341-352
- Published: 30/04/2007
A graph is called set reconstructible if it is determined uniquely (up to isomorphism) by the set of its vertex-deleted subgraphs. We prove that some classes of separable graphs with a unique endvertex are set reconstructible and show that all graphs are set reconstructible if all \(2\)-connected graphs are set reconstructible.
- Research article
- Full Text
- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 335-339
- Published: 30/04/2007
We prove the following extension of the Erdős-Ginzburg-Ziv Theorem. Let \(m\) be a positive integer. For every sequence \(\{a_i\}_{i\in I}\) of elements from the cyclic group \(\mathbb{Z}_m\), where \(|I| = 4m – 5\) (where \(|I| = 4m – 3\)), there exist two subsets \(A, B \subseteq I\) such that \(|A \cap B| = 2\) (such that \(|A \cap B| = 1\)), \(|A| = |B| = m\), and \(\sum\limits_{i\in b} a_i = \sum\limits_{i\in b} b_i = 0\).
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 321-333
- Published: 30/04/2007
A connected graph is said to be super edge-connected if every minimum edge-cut isolates a vertex. The restricted edge-connectivity \(\lambda’\) of a connected graph is the minimum number of edges whose deletion results in a disconnected graph such that each component has at least two vertices. It has been shown by A. H. Esfahanian and S. L. Hakimi (On computing a conditional edge-connectivity of a graph. Information Processing Letters, 27(1988), 195-199] that \(\lambda'(G) \leq \xi(G)\) for any graph of order at least four that is not a star, where \(\xi(G) = \min\{d_G(u) + d_G(v) – 2: uv \text{ is an edge in } G\}\). A graph \(G\) is called \(\lambda’\)-optimal if \(\lambda'(G) = \xi(G)\). This paper proves that the de Bruijn undirected graph \(UB(d,n)\) is \(\lambda’\)-optimal except \(UB(2,1)\), \(UB(3,1)\), and \(UB(2,3)\), and hence, is super edge-connected for \(n\geq 1\) and \(d\geq 2\).
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 307-320
- Published: 30/04/2007
The problem of graceful labeling of a particular class of trees called quasistars is considered. Such a quasistar is a tree \(Q\) with \(k\) distinct paths with lengths \(1, d+1, 2d+1, \ldots, (k-1)d+1\) joined at a unique vertex \(\theta\).
Thus, \(Q\) has \(1 + [1 + (d+1) + (2d+1) + \ldots + (k-1)d+1)] = 1+k +\frac{k(k-1)d}{2}\) vertices. The \(k\) paths of \(Q\) have lengths in arithmetic progression with common difference \(d\). It is shown that \(Q\) has a graceful labeling for all \(k \leq 6\) and all values of \(d\).
- Research article
- Full Text
- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 295-306
- Published: 30/04/2007
The average distance \(\mu(D)\) of a strong digraph \(D\) is the average of the distances between all ordered pairs of distinct vertices of \(D\). Plesnik \([3]\) proved that if \(D\) is a strong tournament of order \(n\), then \(\mu(D) \leq \frac{n+4}{6} + \frac{1}{n}\). In this paper we show that, asymptotically, the same inequality holds for strong bipartite tournaments. We also give an improved upper bound on the average distance of a \(k\)-connected bipartite tournament.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 289-293
- Published: 30/04/2007
To measure the efficiency of a routing in network, Chung et al. [The forwarding index of communication networks. IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 33 (2) (1987), 224-232] proposed the notion of forwarding index and established an upper bound \((n – 1)(n – 2)\) of this parameter for a connected graph of order \(n\). This note improves this bound as \((n – 1)(n – 2) – (2n – 2 – \Delta\lfloor1+\frac{n-1}{\Delta}\rfloor)\) \(\lfloor \frac{n-1}{\Delta}\rfloor\) , where \(\Delta\) is the maximum degree of the graph \(G\). This bound is best possible in the sense that there is a graph \(G\) attaining it.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 279-287
- Published: 30/04/2007
We study the spectral radius of unicyclic graphs with \(n\) vertices and edge independence number \(q\). In this paper, we show that of all unicyclic graphs with \(n\) vertices and edge independence number \(q\), the maximal spectral radius is obtained uniquely at \(\Delta_n(q)\), where \(\Delta_n(q)\) is a graph on \(n\) vertices obtained from the cycle \(C_3\) by attaching \(n – 2q + 1\) pendant edges and \(q – 2\) paths of length \(2\) at one vertex.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 267-278
- Published: 30/04/2007
Let \(q\) be an odd prime power and \(p\) be an odd prime with \(gcd(p, g) = 1\). Let the order of \(g\) modulo \(p\) be \(f\) and \(gcd(\frac{p-1}{f}, q) = 1\). Here explicit expressions for all the primitive idempotents in the ring \(R_{2p^n} = GF(q)[x]/(x^{2p^n} – 1)\), for any positive integer \(n\), are obtained in terms of cyclotomic numbers, provided \(p\) does not divide \(\frac{q^f-1}{2p}\), if \(n \geq 2\). Some lower bounds on the minimum distances of irreducible cyclic codes of length \(2p^n\) over \(GF(q)\) are also obtained.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 257-265
- Published: 30/04/2007
Let \(G\) be a connected multigraph with an even number of edges and suppose that the degree of each vertex of \(G\) is even. Let \((uv, G)\) denote the multiplicity of edge \((u,v)\) in \(G\). It is well known that we can obtain a halving of \(G\) into two halves \(G_1\) and \(G_2\), i.e. that \(G\) can be decomposed into multigraphs \(G_1\) and \(G_2\), where for each vertex \(v\), \(\deg(v, G_1) = \deg(v, G_2) = \frac{1}{2}\deg(v,G)\). It is also easy to see that if the edges with odd multiplicity in \(G\) induce no components with an odd number of edges, then we can obtain such a halving of \(G\) into two halves \(G_1\) and \(G_2\) that is well-spread, i.e. for each edge \((u,v)\) of \(G\), \(|\mu(uv, G_1) – \mu(uv, G_2)| \leq 1\). We show that if \(G\) is a \(\Delta\)-regular multigraph with an even number of vertices and with \(\Delta\) being even, then even if the edges with odd multiplicity in \(G\) induce components with an odd number of edges, we can still obtain a well-spread halving of \(G\) provided that we allow the addition/removal of a Hamilton cycle to/from \(G\). We give an application of this result to obtaining sports schedules such that multiple encounters between teams are well-spread throughout the season.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 083
- Pages: 249-255
- Published: 30/04/2007
A fractional edge coloring of graph \(G\) is an assignment of a nonnegative weight \(w_M\) to each matching \(M\) of \(G\) such that for each edge \(e\) we have \(\sum_{M\ni e} w_M \geq 1\). The fractional edge coloring chromatic number of a graph \(G\), denoted by \(\chi’_f(G)\), is the minimum value of \(\sum_{M} w_M\) (where the minimum is over all fractional edge colorings \(w\)). It is known that for any simple graph \(G\) with maximum degree \(\Delta\), \(\Delta < \chi'_f(G) \leq \Delta+1\). And \(\chi'_f(G) = \Delta+1\) if and only if \(G\) is \(K_{2n+1}\). In this paper, we give some sufficient conditions for a graph \(G\) to have \(\chi'_f(G) = \Delta\). Furthermore, we show that the results in this paper are the best possible.
Call for papers
- Proceedings of International Conference on Discrete Mathematics (ICDM 2025) – Submissions are closed
- Proceedings of International Conference on Graph Theory and its Applications (ICGTA 2026)
- Special Issue of Ars Combinatoria on Graph Theory and its Applications (ICGTA 2025)
- MWTA 2025 – Proceedings in Ars Combinatoria




