Chromatic symmetric functions of conjoined graphs

Abstract

We introduce path-conjoined graphs defined for two rooted graphs by joining their roots with a path, and investigate the chromatic symmetric functions of its two generalizations: spider-conjoined graphs and chain-conjoined graphs. By using the composition method developed by Zhou and the third author recently, we obtain neat positive $e_I$-expansions for the chromatic symmetric functions of clique-path-cycle graphs, path-clique-path graphs, and clique-clique-path graphs. We pose the $e$-positivity conjecture for hat-chains.