Contents

Independence in Function Graphs

Raluceca Gera1, Craig E. Larson2, Ryan Pepper3, Craig Rasmussen
1Naval Postgraduate School, Department of Applied Mathematics, Monterey, CA 93943; rgera@nps.edu, ras@nps.edu Virginia Commonwealth University,
2Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Richmond, VA 23284 clarson@vcu.edu 3 University of Houston Downtown,
3Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Houston, TX 77002 pepperr@uhd.edu

Abstract

Given two graphs \( G \) and \( H \) and a function \( f \subset V(G) \times V(H) \), Hedetniemi [9] defined the \emph{function graph} \( GfH \) by \( V(GfH) = V(G) \cup V(H) \) and \( E(GfH) = E(G) \cup E(H) \cup \{uv \mid v : f(u)\} \). Whenever \( G \cong H \), the function graph was called a functigraph by Chen, Ferrero, Gera, and Yi [7]. A function graph is a generalization of the \( \alpha \)-permutation graph introduced by Chartrand and Harary [5]. The independence number of a graph is the size of a largest set of mutually non-adjacent vertices. In this paper, we study independence number in function graphs. In particular, we give a lower bound in terms of the order and the chromatic number, which improves on some elementary results and has a number of interesting corollaries.

Keywords: independence, function graphs, functigraphs, permutation graphs, generalized prisms, generalized Petersen graphs