In the

mathematical Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

field of

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

, the bull graph is a

planar Planar is an adjective meaning "relating to a plane (geometry)". Planar may also refer to: Science and technology * Planar (computer graphics), computer graphics pixel information from several bitplanes * Planar (transmission line technologies), ...

undirected graph In discrete mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a graph is a structure amounting to a set of objects in which some pairs of the objects are in some sense "related". The objects correspond to mathematical abstractions called '' ve ...

with 5 vertices and 5 edges, in the form of a triangle with two disjoint pendant edges. It has

chromatic number In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a graph subject to certain constraints. In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertices ...

chromatic index In graph theory, an edge coloring of a graph is an assignment of "colors" to the edges of the graph so that no two incident edges have the same color. For example, the figure to the right shows an edge coloring of a graph by the colors red, blu ...

3, radius 2, diameter 3 and girth 3. It is also a

self-complementary graph In the mathematical field of graph theory, a self-complementary graph is a graph which is isomorphic to its complement. The simplest non-trivial self-complementary graphs are the path graph and the cycle graph. There is no known characterizatio ...

, a

block graph In graph theory, a branch of combinatorial mathematics, a block graph or clique tree. is a type of undirected graph in which every biconnected component (block) is a clique. Block graphs are sometimes erroneously called Husimi trees (after K� ...

, a

split graph In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, a split graph is a graph in which the vertices can be partitioned into a clique and an independent set. Split graphs were first studied by , and independently introduced by . A split graph may have m ...

, an

interval graph In graph theory, an interval graph is an undirected graph formed from a set of intervals on the real line, with a vertex for each interval and an edge between vertices whose intervals intersect. It is the intersection graph of the intervals. In ...

, a

claw-free graph In graph theory, an area of mathematics, a claw-free graph is a graph that does not have a claw as an induced subgraph. A claw is another name for the complete bipartite graph ''K''1,3 (that is, a star graph comprising three edges, three leaves, ...

, a 1- vertex-connected graph and a 1- edge-connected graph.

Bull-free graphs

A graph is bull-free if it has no bull as an

induced subgraph In the mathematical field of graph theory, an induced subgraph of a graph is another graph, formed from a subset of the vertices of the graph and ''all'' of the edges (from the original graph) connecting pairs of vertices in that subset. Defini ...

. The

triangle-free graph In the mathematical area of graph theory, a triangle-free graph is an undirected graph in which no three vertices form a triangle of edges. Triangle-free graphs may be equivalently defined as graphs with clique number ≤ 2, graphs with g ...

s are bull-free graphs, since every bull contains a triangle. The strong perfect graph theorem was proven for bull-free graphs long before its proof for general graphs, and a polynomial time recognition algorithm for Bull-free perfect graphs is known.

Maria Chudnovsky Maria Chudnovsky (born January 6, 1977) is an Israeli-American mathematician working on graph theory and combinatorial optimization. She is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. Education and career Chudnovsky is a professor in the department of mathematic ...

and

Shmuel Safra Shmuel Safra ( he, שמואל ספרא) is an Israeli computer scientist. He is a Professor of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He was born in Jerusalem. Safra's research areas include Computational complexity theory, complexity ...

have studied bull-free graphs more generally, showing that any such graph must have either a large

clique A clique ( AusE, CanE, or ), in the social sciences, is a group of individuals who interact with one another and share similar interests. Interacting with cliques is part of normative social development regardless of gender, ethnicity, or popular ...

or a large independent set (that is, the Erdős–Hajnal conjecture holds for the bull graph), and developing a general structure theory for these graphs..

Chromatic and characteristic polynomial

The

chromatic polynomial The chromatic polynomial is a graph polynomial studied in algebraic graph theory, a branch of mathematics. It counts the number of graph colorings as a function of the number of colors and was originally defined by George David Birkhoff to s ...

of the bull graph is

(x-2)(x-1)^3x

. Two other graphs are chromatically equivalent to the bull graph. Its characteristic polynomial is

-x(x^2-x-3)(x^2+x-1)

. Its

Tutte polynomial The Tutte polynomial, also called the dichromate or the Tutte–Whitney polynomial, is a graph polynomial. It is a polynomial in two variables which plays an important role in graph theory. It is defined for every undirected graph G and contai ...

x^4+x^3+x^2y

References

{{reflist Individual graphs Planar graphs