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Path and Rechability

The document discusses graph theory concepts like paths, trails, walks and reachability. It defines these terms and proves certain properties about them, like paths, trails and walks being equivalent regarding reachability between vertices. It also discusses using paths to define reachability and distance between vertices in a graph.

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Karthic Subramani
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5 views6 pages

Path and Rechability

The document discusses graph theory concepts like paths, trails, walks and reachability. It defines these terms and proves certain properties about them, like paths, trails and walks being equivalent regarding reachability between vertices. It also discusses using paths to define reachability and distance between vertices in a graph.

Uploaded by

Karthic Subramani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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DISCRETE MATHEMATICS

GRAPH THEORY ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC : PATH AND RELIABILITY

Karthic Subramani.S
2113171075005
Path :
Definition 2.1. A walk in a graph is a sequence of the form
v1,e1,v2,e2...vr, for some r 1, where the vi are vertices and ei is an
edge from vi to vi+1 for each 1 i < r. Remark. If r = 1 the walk
consists of a single vertex and no edges; this is still valid.

Definition 2.2. A trail is a walk in which no edge appears more than


once. Definition 2.3. A path is a walk in which no vertex appears
more than once. We might want to know whether there is a path (or
trail, or walk) between specific vertices x and y. First we note that
the answer is the same in each case.

Lemma 2.4. The following are equivalent: 1. there is a path from x


to y; 2. there is a trail from x to y; 3. there is a walk from x to y.

Proof. First note that, since any path is also a trail and any trail is
also a walk, 1) ⇒ 2) ⇒ 3). So it suffices to prove that 3) ⇒ 1). We
will complete the proof in lectures. Write x 0 so x y if there is a path
from x to y; recall that the single vertex x is a path of length x. The
relation is an equivalence relation, since if x y and y z then we can
put the two paths together to get a walk from x to z, and by Lemma
2.4 this implies x z. Consequently we may partition the vertices into
equivalence classes of these the components of G.

Theorem 2.5. A graph G is connected if and only if there is a path


between every pair of vertices.

Proof (non-examinable). Write V for the set of vertices. Suppose


there is no path from v to w, for v,w ∈ V. Let C be the component
containing v. Certainly v ∈ C and w ∈ V \C, so both sets are
non-empty. There are no edges between C and V \C, since there is
no path from any vertex in C to any vertex not in C, by definition.
So, writing G1 for the subgraph induced by C and G2 for the
subgraph induced by V \C, G = G1 G2.
Conversely, suppose G = G3 G4 is not connected. Let v be a vertex
of G3 and w be a vertex of G4. If there is a path in G from v to w
then let x be the last vertex on the path which belongs to G3, and y
be the next vertex (which exists since x= w). Then xy is not an edge
of G3, since y is not in G3, nor is it an edge of G4, since x is not in
G4. But xy is an edge of G, so G=G3 G4. We may therefore
equivalently define a connected graph to be one which has a path
between every pair of vertices; we will generally find this definition
easier to work with.

Reachability:

We use paths to extend edge relations to a relation on arbitrary


pairs of nodes in the graph. We use them to define things like
reachability and distance.

De nition 3 (Reachability). We say the v is reachable from u in


graph G if and only if there is a path from u to v.

Definition 4 (Distance). Furthermore, we de ne the distance from u


to v in a graph G, denoted dG(u,v) or just d(u,v) when the graph is
clear from context, to be the length of the shortest path from u to v
or ∞ if v is not reachable from u. Note that if we think of think of
edges as encoding a relation R on pairs of vertices, i.e. uRv if and
only if (u,v) ∈ E then this relation is not transitive, i.e. uRv and vRw
does not necessarily imply that uRw. However, it is the case that if v
is reachable from u and w is reachable from v then w is reachable
from v (just concatenate the paths). In fact, it is not too hard to
show, that reachability as a relation (the pairs that are reachable
from each other) is the transitive closure of the standard relation
induced by the edges, i.e. it is the minimum transitive relation that
contains the edge relation.
Claim 5. Reachability is the transitive closure of the relation
imposed by the edges of a graph, i.e. if given a graph G we add an
edge (u,v) whenever u can reach v this new graph is the edge
minimal graph containing the original graph where a (u,v) and (v,w)
edge in the new graph imply a (u,w) edge in the new graph. Now it
is natural to reason about the structure of the reachability relation. If
we make a graph where for every pair of vertices we add an edge
from u to v if and only if u can reach v. What do these graphs look
like? For undirected graphs, it is easy to say that this will simply
make a variety of disjoint cliques or complete graphs. This
motivates the following definitions of connectivity for undirected
graphs.

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