Chromatic bases for symmetric functions

Abstract

In this note we obtain numerous new bases for the algebra of symmetric functions whose generators are chromatic symmetric functions. More precisely, if $\{ G_ k \}_{k\geq 1}$ is a set of connected graphs such that $G_k$ has $k$ vertices for each $k$, then the set of all chromatic symmetric functions $\{ X_{G_ k} \}_{k\geq 1}$ generates the algebra of symmetric functions. We also obtain explicit expressions for the generators arising from complete graphs, star graphs, path graphs and cycle graphs.