Graphs, Groups and Surfaces PDF Download

Author: A.T. White
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080871194
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The field of topological graph theory has expanded greatly in the ten years since the first edition of this book appeared. The original nine chapters of this classic work have therefore been revised and updated. Six new chapters have been added, dealing with: voltage graphs, non-orientable imbeddings, block designs associated with graph imbeddings, hypergraph imbeddings, map automorphism groups and change ringing.Thirty-two new problems have been added to this new edition, so that there are now 181 in all; 22 of these have been designated as ``difficult'' and 9 as ``unsolved''. Three of the four unsolved problems from the first edition have been solved in the ten years between editions; they are now marked as ``difficult''.

Author: A.T. White
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080507581
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
The book, suitable as both an introductory reference and as a text book in the rapidly growing field of topological graph theory, models both maps (as in map-coloring problems) and groups by means of graph imbeddings on sufaces. Automorphism groups of both graphs and maps are studied. In addition connections are made to other areas of mathematics, such as hypergraphs, block designs, finite geometries, and finite fields. There are chapters on the emerging subfields of enumerative topological graph theory and random topological graph theory, as well as a chapter on the composition of English church-bell music. The latter is facilitated by imbedding the right graph of the right group on an appropriate surface, with suitable symmetries. Throughout the emphasis is on Cayley maps: imbeddings of Cayley graphs for finite groups as (possibly branched) covering projections of surface imbeddings of loop graphs with one vertex. This is not as restrictive as it might sound; many developments in topological graph theory involve such imbeddings.The approach aims to make all this interconnected material readily accessible to a beginning graduate (or an advanced undergraduate) student, while at the same time providing the research mathematician with a useful reference book in topological graph theory. The focus will be on beautiful connections, both elementary and deep, within mathematics that can best be described by the intuitively pleasing device of imbedding graphs of groups on surfaces.

Author: Joanna A. Ellis-Monaghan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461469716
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
Graphs on Surfaces: Dualities, Polynomials, and Knots offers an accessible and comprehensive treatment of recent developments on generalized duals of graphs on surfaces, and their applications. The authors illustrate the interdependency between duality, medial graphs and knots; how this interdependency is reflected in algebraic invariants of graphs and knots; and how it can be exploited to solve problems in graph and knot theory. Taking a constructive approach, the authors emphasize how generalized duals and related ideas arise by localizing classical constructions, such as geometric duals and Tait graphs, and then removing artificial restrictions in these constructions to obtain full extensions of them to embedded graphs. The authors demonstrate the benefits of these generalizations to embedded graphs in chapters describing their applications to graph polynomials and knots. Graphs on Surfaces: Dualities, Polynomials, and Knots also provides a self-contained introduction to graphs on surfaces, generalized duals, topological graph polynomials, and knot polynomials that is accessible both to graph theorists and to knot theorists. Directed at those with some familiarity with basic graph theory and knot theory, this book is appropriate for graduate students and researchers in either area. Because the area is advancing so rapidly, the authors give a comprehensive overview of the topic and include a robust bibliography, aiming to provide the reader with the necessary foundations to stay abreast of the field. The reader will come away from the text convinced of advantages of considering these higher genus analogues of constructions of plane and abstract graphs, and with a good understanding of how they arise.

Author: Sergei K. Lando
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540383611
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
Graphs drawn on two-dimensional surfaces have always attracted researchers by their beauty and by the variety of difficult questions to which they give rise. The theory of such embedded graphs, which long seemed rather isolated, has witnessed the appearance of entirely unexpected new applications in recent decades, ranging from Galois theory to quantum gravity models, and has become a kind of a focus of a vast field of research. The book provides an accessible introduction to this new domain, including such topics as coverings of Riemann surfaces, the Galois group action on embedded graphs (Grothendieck's theory of "dessins d'enfants"), the matrix integral method, moduli spaces of curves, the topology of meromorphic functions, and combinatorial aspects of Vassiliev's knot invariants and, in an appendix by Don Zagier, the use of finite group representation theory. The presentation is concrete throughout, with numerous figures, examples (including computer calculations) and exercises, and should appeal to both graduate students and researchers.

Author: Peter Giblin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139491172
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Homology theory is a powerful algebraic tool that is at the centre of current research in topology and its applications. This accessible textbook will appeal to mathematics students interested in the application of algebra to geometrical problems, specifically the study of surfaces (sphere, torus, Mobius band, Klein bottle). In this introduction to simplicial homology - the most easily digested version of homology theory - the author studies interesting geometrical problems, such as the structure of two-dimensional surfaces and the embedding of graphs in surfaces, using the minimum of algebraic machinery and including a version of Lefschetz duality. Assuming very little mathematical knowledge, the book provides a complete account of the algebra needed (abelian groups and presentations), and the development of the material is always carefully explained with proofs given in full detail. Numerous examples and exercises are also included, making this an ideal text for undergraduate courses or for self-study.

Author: Warren Dicks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521230339
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Originally published in 1989, this is an advanced text and research monograph on groups acting on low-dimensional topological spaces, and for the most part the viewpoint is algebraic. Much of the book occurs at the one-dimensional level, where the topology becomes graph theory. Two-dimensional topics include the characterization of Poincare duality groups and accessibility of almost finitely presented groups. The main three-dimensional topics are the equivariant loop and sphere theorems. The prerequisites grow as the book progresses up the dimensions. A familiarity with group theory is sufficient background for at least the first third of the book, while the later chapters occasionally state without proof and then apply various facts which require knowledge of homological algebra and algebraic topology. This book is essential reading for anyone contemplating working in the subject.

Author: Lowell W. Beineke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139643681
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
The use of topological ideas to explore various aspects of graph theory, and vice versa, is a fruitful area of research. There are links with other areas of mathematics, such as design theory and geometry, and increasingly with such areas as computer networks where symmetry is an important feature. Other books cover portions of the material here, but there are no other books with such a wide scope. This book contains fifteen expository chapters written by acknowledged international experts in the field. Their well-written contributions have been carefully edited to enhance readability and to standardize the chapter structure, terminology and notation throughout the book. To help the reader, there is an extensive introductory chapter that covers the basic background material in graph theory and the topology of surfaces. Each chapter concludes with an extensive list of references.

Author: Tomaz Pisanski
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0817683631
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Configurations can be studied from a graph-theoretical viewpoint via the so-called Levi graphs and lie at the heart of graphs, groups, surfaces, and geometries, all of which are very active areas of mathematical exploration. In this self-contained textbook, algebraic graph theory is used to introduce groups; topological graph theory is used to explore surfaces; and geometric graph theory is implemented to analyze incidence geometries. After a preview of configurations in Chapter 1, a concise introduction to graph theory is presented in Chapter 2, followed by a geometric introduction to groups in Chapter 3. Maps and surfaces are combinatorially treated in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 introduces the concept of incidence structure through vertex colored graphs, and the combinatorial aspects of classical configurations are studied. Geometric aspects, some historical remarks, references, and applications of classical configurations appear in the last chapter. With over two hundred illustrations, challenging exercises at the end of each chapter, a comprehensive bibliography, and a set of open problems, Configurations from a Graphical Viewpoint is well suited for a graduate graph theory course, an advanced undergraduate seminar, or a self-contained reference for mathematicians and researchers.

Author: Bojan Mohar
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801866890
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Graph theory is one of the fastest growing branches of mathematics. Until recently, it was regarded as a branch of combinatorics and was best known by the famous four-color theorem stating that any map can be colored using only four colors such that no two bordering countries have the same color. Now graph theory is an area of its own with many deep results and beautiful open problems. Graph theory has numerous applications in almost every field of science and has attracted new interest because of its relevance to such technological problems as computer and telephone networking and, of course, the internet. In this new book in the Johns Hopkins Studies in the Mathematical Science series, Bojan Mohar and Carsten Thomassen look at a relatively new area of graph theory: that associated with curved surfaces. Graphs on surfaces form a natural link between discrete and continuous mathematics. The book provides a rigorous and concise introduction to graphs on surfaces and surveys some of the recent developments in this area. Among the basic results discussed are Kuratowski's theorem and other planarity criteria, the Jordan Curve Theorem and some of its extensions, the classification of surfaces, and the Heffter-Edmonds-Ringel rotation principle, which makes it possible to treat graphs on surfaces in a purely combinatorial way. The genus of a graph, contractability of cycles, edge-width, and face-width are treated purely combinatorially, and several results related to these concepts are included. The extension by Robertson and Seymour of Kuratowski's theorem to higher surfaces is discussed in detail, and a shorter proof is presented. The book concludes with a survey of recent developments on coloring graphs on surfaces.

Author: Wolfgang Woess
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521552923
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The main theme of this book is the interplay between the behaviour of a class of stochastic processes (random walks) and discrete structure theory. The author considers Markov chains whose state space is equipped with the structure of an infinite, locally finite graph, or as a particular case, of a finitely generated group. The transition probabilities are assumed to be adapted to the underlying structure in some way that must be specified precisely in each case. From the probabilistic viewpoint, the question is what impact the particular type of structure has on various aspects of the behaviour of the random walk. Vice-versa, random walks may also be seen as useful tools for classifying, or at least describing the structure of graphs and groups. Links with spectral theory and discrete potential theory are also discussed. This book will be essential reading for all researchers working in stochastic process and related topics.