A note on the alternating number of independent sets in a graph

Abstract

The independence polynomial of a graph $G$ evaluated at $-1$, denoted here as $I(G;-1)$, has arisen in a variety of different areas of mathematics and theoretical physics as an object of interest. Engstr\"om used discrete Morse theory to prove that $\left|I(G;-1)\right|\leq 2^{\phi(G)}$ where $\phi(G)$ is the decycling number of $G$, i.e., the minimum number of vertices needed to be deleted from $G$ so that the remaining graph is acyclic. Here, we improve Engstr\"om's bound by showing $\left|I(G;-1)\right|\leq 2^{\phi_3(G)}$ where $\phi_3(G)$ is the minimum number of vertices needed to be deleted from $G$ so that the resulting graph contains no induced cycles whose length is divisible by $3$. We also note that this bound is not just sharp but that every value in the range given by the bound is attainable by some connected graph.