On bipartite graphs having minimal fourth adjacency coefficient

Abstract

Let $G$ be a simple graph with order $n$ and adjacency matrix $\mathbf{A}(G)$. Let $\phi(G; \lambda)=\det(\lambda I-\mathbf{A}(G))=\sum_{i=0}^n\mathbf{a}_i(G)\lambda^{n-i}$ be the characteristic polynomial of $G$, where $\mathbf{a}_i(G)$ is called the $i$-th adjacency coefficient of $G$. Denote by $\mathfrak{B}_{n,m}$ the set of all connected graphs having $n$ vertices and $m$ edges. A bipartite graph $G$ is referred as bipartite optimal if $$\mathbf{a}_4(G)=min\{\mathbf{a}_4(H)|H\in \mathfrak{B}_{n,m}\}.$$ The value $min\{\mathbf{a}_4(H)|H\in \mathfrak{B}_{n,m}\}$ is called the minimal $4$-Sachs number in $\mathfrak{B}_{n,m}$, denoted by $\bar{\mathbf{a}}_4(\mathfrak{B}_{n,m})$. \vspace{2mm} For any given integer pair $(n,m)$, we in this paper investigate the bipartite optimal graphs. Firstly, we show that each bipartite optimal graph is a difference graph (see Theorem 10). Then we deduce some structural properties on bipartite optimal graphs. As applications of those properties, we determine all bipartite optimal $(n,m)$-graphs together with the corresponding minimal $4$-Sachs number for $n\ge 5$ and $n-1\le m\le 3(n-3)$. Finally, we express the problem of computing the minimal $4$-Sachs number as a class of combinatorial optimization problem, which relates to the partitions of positive integers.