A multivariate interlace polynomial

Abstract

We define a multivariate polynomial that generalizes several interlace polynomials defined by Arratia, Bollobas and Sorkin on the one hand, and Aigner and van der Holst on the other. We follow the route traced by Sokal, who defined a multivariate generalization of Tutte's polynomial. We also show that bounded portions of our interlace polynomial can be evaluated in polynomial time for graphs of bounded clique-width. Its full evaluation is necessarly exponential just because of the size of the result.