TY - JOUR
T1 - Chromatic polynomials, Potts models and all that
AU - Sokal, Alan D.
N1 - Funding Information:
Supported in part by NSF grants PHY-9520978 and PHY-9900769.
PY - 2000/5/1
Y1 - 2000/5/1
N2 - The q-state Potts model can be defined on an arbitrary finite graph, and its partition function encodes much important information about that graph, including its chromatic polynomial, flow polynomial and reliability polynomial. The complex zeros of the Potts partition function are of interest both to statistical mechanicians and to combinatorists. I give a pedagogical introduction to all these problems, and then sketch two recent results: (a) Construction of a countable family of planar graphs whose chromatic zeros are dense in the whole complex q-plane except possibly for the disc |q-1|<1. (b) Proof of a universal upper bound on the q-plane zeros of the chromatic polynomial (or antiferromagnetic Potts-model partition function) in terms of the graph's maximum degree.
AB - The q-state Potts model can be defined on an arbitrary finite graph, and its partition function encodes much important information about that graph, including its chromatic polynomial, flow polynomial and reliability polynomial. The complex zeros of the Potts partition function are of interest both to statistical mechanicians and to combinatorists. I give a pedagogical introduction to all these problems, and then sketch two recent results: (a) Construction of a countable family of planar graphs whose chromatic zeros are dense in the whole complex q-plane except possibly for the disc |q-1|<1. (b) Proof of a universal upper bound on the q-plane zeros of the chromatic polynomial (or antiferromagnetic Potts-model partition function) in terms of the graph's maximum degree.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0378-4371(99)00519-1
DO - 10.1016/S0378-4371(99)00519-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0033727834
SN - 0378-4371
VL - 279
SP - 324
EP - 332
JO - Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
JF - Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
IS - 1
ER -