Contractible independence complexes of trees
We show that the independence complex of a tree is contractible if and only if it can be reduced to a path P n with n ≡ 1 ( mod 3 ) by a sequence of truncation moves at branching points. As a consequence of our method, we also characterize the trees for which the independence polynomial evaluated at −1 is equal to 1 or −1.
Authors
- My Hanh Pham (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8565-8957)
- Thanh Vu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1967-397X)
Institutions
- Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (VN)
- Institute of Mathematics (VN)
- An Giang University (VN)
- Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Discrete Applied Mathematics
- Published
- 2026-10-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dam.2026.10.013
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Combinatorial Mathematics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00