Isotropic systems and the interlace polynomial

Abstract

Through a series of papers in the 1980's, Bouchet introduced isotropic systems and the Tutte-Martin polynomial of an isotropic system. Then, Arratia, Bollobás, and Sorkin developed the interlace polynomial of a graph in [ABS00] in response to a DNA sequencing application. The interlace polynomial has generated considerable recent attention, with new results including realizing the original interlace polynomial by a closed form generating function expression instead of by the original recursive definition (see Aigner and van der Holst [AvdH04], and Arratia, Bollobás, and Sorkin [ABS04b]). Now, Bouchet [Bou05] recognizes the vertex-nullity interlace polynomial of a graph as the Tutte-Martin polynomial of an associated isotropic system. This suggests that the machinery of isotropic systems may be well-suited to investigating properties of the interlace polynomial. Thus, we present here an alternative proof for the closed form presentation of the vertex-nullity interlace polynomial using the machinery of isotropic systems. This approach both illustrates the intimate connection between the vertex-nullity interlace polynomial and the Tutte-Martin polynomial of an isotropic system and also provides a concrete example of manipulating isotropic systems. We also provide a brief survey of related work.