1. Introduction
is the polynomials which are defined on the field of complex numbers with variables
,
is a polynomial set contains m polynomials with n variables, let
denotes the ideal which is generated by the polynomial set S. We consider the system of polynomial equations:
(1)
A well-known fact in computational algebra is that [1] , when the monomial order
is given, calculating a Gröbner bases G of the ideal
could solves the following three problems simultaneously:
i) The system of Equations (1) has no solution if and only if G contains a non-zero constant.
ii) The system of Equations (1) has only finitely many solutions if and only if for each
, there exists
such that the leading monomial of
is of the form
, where
.
iii) Since any monomial sequence
is an eliminative sequence, in the case where the system of Equations (1) has a solution and only finitely many solutions G gives a very simple “trapezoidal” system of equations equivalent to the system (1), i.e. It can be solved by a successively variational back-substitution manner.
The problem of finding a extremely independent set in graph theory is usually solved using optimization methods. The literature [2] transforms the problem of finding a extremely independent set into an optimization problem for the solution of multivariate polynomial equations. In this paper, we enhance the existing literature from the simple problem of finding a extremely independent set to a more general one. In this paper, we enhance the problem of finding a extremely independent set from the existing literature to the more general problem of determining the existence and solution of an independent set with k vertices, and use the Gröbner basis to give a solution to this problem. The Gröbner basis is used to give an efficient solution. Precisely, for any given finite graph G and
, we first transform the problem of the existence of an independent set with k vertices in G into the problem of the existence of solutions (actually 0 - 1 solutions with coordinates 0 or 1) to a system of multivariate polynomial equations. Noting that there are only finitely many such 0 - 1 solutions (if they exist), by virtue of i), ii) and iii) above, we can compute the Gröbner basis to give an efficient discriminant and solution path for the independent set of a graph G with k vertices, and thus find the number of independent and maximal independent sets of the graph. Due to the fact that the techniques for computing the Gröbner basis of polynomials are now very well established any of the computational algebra programs such as Maple, Macaulay 2, CoCoA, etc. [3] [4] can calculate the ideal Gröbner basis for a given polynomial group. Beside, there are now more recent algorithms for calculating Gröbner bases such as F4, F5. Therefore, the method obtained in this paper can be applied directly to any finite graph without involving the complexity of existing algorithms for computing Gröbner bases. It does not involve the complexity of existing algorithms for computing Gröbner bases, nor does it discuss the comparison with existing optimization algorithms that only find very large independent sets.
2. Preliminaries
This section briefly introduces the knowledge about independent sets in graph theory needed later and the existing literature [5] on solving graphs by optimization methods for the main methods and results on very large independent sets.
Given a graph
, where
is the set of vertices of G and
is the set of edges of G.
Definition 1. Let G be a simple graph and S a non-empty subset of V. If any two points in S are not adjacent, then S is defined as an extremely independent set of G. If G has no independent set
such that
, then S is an extremely independent set of the graph G. The number of vertices contained in the extremely independent set of a graph G is called the independence number of the graph G.
Let the following graph
be a simple graph and
be the adjacency matrix of the graph G, where
In particular,
. Let
denote the i-th row of the matrix A. Using the notation in the literature [2] , for a subset S of the graph G, define the vector
,where
Then
denotes the sum of the number of edges connected to the point
in the subset S.
Theorem 1. [6] A point set
is an independent set of the graph
if and only if
.
3. Gröbner Basis Discriminant for k-Independent Sets of Graphs and Their Existence
Given a graph
with n vertices, it is clear that G has a extremely independent set. But we would like to know for which
there exists an independent set in G with k vertices. In this section we translate the problem of existence and solution of k-independent sets into the solution of systems of multivariate polynomial equations by drawing on the literature [7] for solving very 0 - 1 polynomial programming methods for extremely independent sets and gives an efficient discriminant for graphs containing k-independent sets using the Gröbner basis.
Adopting the notation used in Section 2, by expanding the left-hand side of the equation
from Theorem 1 in the previous section, we obtain that
(2)
where
is a non-negative integer and
if and only if
. In particular,
. It follows from Theorem 1 that there exists a one-to-one correspondence between the set of independent sets of the graph G and the set of 0 - 1 solutions (i.e. solutions with coordinates 0 or 1) of the multivariate polynomial equation
The definition of the vector
and the 0 - 1 assignment rule for its coordinates
imply that the k vertices
form an independent set of G must have
.
Definition 2. Let
be an independent set of a graph G. If
, where
, then S is said to be a k-independent set of a graph G.
Here we use the classical Gröbner basis method [1] for discriminating the existence of solutions to systems of polynomial equations to give an efficient discriminant for the existence of k-independent sets.
Theorem 2.
,consider the following system of equations determined by a polynomial over a complex field
:
i) Graph G has k-independent sets if and only if the system of equations
has a solution.
ii) If the system of equations
has solutions, then all solutions of
are given for all k-independent sets of G.
iii) Let I be the ideal generated by all the first terms of the equations of
in the multivariate polynomial ring
. Then the system of equations
has a solution if and only if the Gröbner basis of the ideal I does not contain non-zero constants.
Proof: i) By Theorem 1 a set
is an independent set of the graph
if and only if
. Then we now only need to verify the sufficient necessity of k-independent sets. If the graph G has a k-independent set, then
(3)
has a solution and thus the system of equations
has a solution. Conversely, if the system of equations
has a solution, then the Equation (3) must have a solution, i.e. there exists an independent set with k vertices. Thus, the graph G has a k-independent set.
ii) If the equation
has a solution, then for a solution of
, take the set of vertices corresponding to
which takes the value 1. The set of vertices is a k-independent set of the graph G by the definition of the vector
. Alternatively, for a k-independent set of the graph G, the corresponding vector
satisfies
And by the conclusion of Theorem 1, Equation (2) holds, and therefore the system of equations
holds. Thus the vector corresponding to this independent set is a solution of the system of equations
. The solutions of the system of equations
and the independent sets of the graph G correspond one-to-one, i.e. all solutions of the system of equations
give all k-inde- pendent sets of G.
iii) The solution of the system of equations
and the solution of the Gröbner basis of the ideal I are identical by the nature of the Gröbner basis. If the equation system
has a solution, then
, i.e.
, so that the solution of the Gröbner basis of the ideal I does not contain non-zero constants; If the Gröbner basis of the ideal I does not contain non-zero constants, then we have
and thus the system of equations
has a solution [8] [9] [10] .
4. Gröbner Based Methods for Finding k-Independent Sets, Independence Numbers and Maximal Independence Sets of Graphs
This section gives the Gröbner basis method for finding the k-independent set of a graph, the number of independents and the extremely independent set according to Theorem 2 in Section 3. Using the notation used in the previous two sections.
4.1. Method for Finding the k-Independent Set of a Graph
According to the previous discussion, if the system of equations
has a solution, all k-independent sets of the graph G can be obtained by solving the system of equations
. Although there are many ways to solve a multivariate polynomial, note that if the system of equations
has a solution, then its solutions are all 0 - 1 solutions (i.e. solutions with coordinates 0 or 1) and the number of solutions must be finite. It follows from the literature [1] that, for a given sequence
of eliminative monomials, an approximate Gröbner basis for the ideal I gives a system of equations equivalent to the system of equations
in the form:
Thus, after computing an approximate Gröbner basis for the ideal I under the eliminative monadic order
, all k-independent sets of the graph G can be found by back substitution. In a practical application of Theorem 2 and this conclusion, we can determine whether a graph G has a k-inde- pendent set by first calling the program for calculating Gröbner bases in Maple, and if so, we can obtain all k-independent sets of G by solving the system of equations
with the program for solving the system of equations
.
4.2. Methods for Finding the Number of Independents and the Extremely Independent Set of a Graph
The k-independent set of a graph (if it exists) is not necessarily unique. But since the number of vertices in the independent set of each finite graph is finite, the number of vertices in the k-independent set k has a maximum. This maximum value is the number of vertices in the maximal independent set of the graph, i.e. the number of independent vertices of the graph G. Following we give a method for finding the number of independence of a graph G based on Theorem 2.
Theorem 3. k is an independent number of the graph G if and only if the system of equations
has a solution ,but the system of equations
has no solution.
Proof
If k is the independence number of the graph G, then it follows that the number of vertices contained in the extremely independent set of the graph G is k. By the conclusion of 1) in Theorem 2 we know that the system of equations
has a solution. By the definition of independence, the number of vertices in an independent set in graph G is at most k. Therefore, there is no independent set with
vertices in graph G. Hence, equation
has no solution, so the system of equations
has no solution.
If the system of equations
has a solution and the system of equations
has no solution, by the conclusion of i) in Theorem 2 we have that there exists a k-independent set but not a
-independent set of the graph G. This means that the maximum number of vertices contained in the independent set of the graph G can only be k. So by definition of an independent number, k is an independent number of the graph G.
A solution to the problem of finding the number of independents can be obtained from Theorem 3, i.e. We can achieve the independence numbers by computing the k-independence sets in the order from small to large or from large to small, and thus obtain the extremely independent set of the graph G.
5. Experiment
Consider Figure 1 below [11] [12] , a finite graph
, where the set of vertices
and the set of edges
.
In the following we apply the calculations gained earlier to compute the k-independent set, the number of independent sets and the extremely independent set of the graph G respectively. Where the adjacency matrix is as follows:
.
We now calculate the k-independent set using the order from smallest to largest for k.
1-independent set
An approximate Gröbner basis for the ideal
is obtained by the procedure for calculating the Gröbner basis in Maple.
The system of equations
equivalent to the system of equations
is given by
as
Calling the program in Maple that solves the system of equations for the system of equations
to obtain all 1-independent sets
2-independent sets
An approximate Gröbner basis for the ideal
is obtained by the procedure for calculating the Gröbner basis in Maple.
The system of equations
equivalent to the system of equations
is given by
as
Similarly for the system of equations
is solved to obtain all 2-inde- pendent sets
3-independent sets
Calculating a Gröbner basis of the ideal
yields its Gröbner basis
, containing non-zero constants, so by the conclusion of Theorem 2 in iii) we know that the system of equations
is non-solvable. So the graph does not exist as a 3-independent set.
The system of equations
has a solution but the system of equations
has no solution. By the conclusion of Theorem 3, the number of independents of the graph G is 2, and the independent sets are as follows:
1-independent sets
;
2-independent sets
.
The independence number of a graph G is 2. The set of all 2-independents is the extremely independent set of the graph.