Characterizing circle graphs with binomial partial Petrial polynomials

Abstract

The partial Petrial polynomial was first introduced by Gross, Mansour, and Tucker as a generating function that enumerates the Euler genera of all possible partial Petrials on a ribbon graph. Yan and Li later extended this polynomial invariant to circle graphs by utilizing the correspondence between circle graphs and bouquets. Their explicit computation demonstrated that paths produce binomial polynomials, specifically those containing exactly two non-zero terms. This discovery led them to pose a fundamental characterization problem: identify all connected circle graphs whose partial Petrial polynomial is binomial. In this paper, we solve this open problem in terms of local complementation and prove that for connected circle graphs, the binomial property holds precisely when the graph is a path.