Schur and $e$-positivity of trees and cut vertices

Samantha Dahlberg, Adrian She, Stephanie van Willigenburg

Published 2019-01-08Version 1

We prove that the chromatic symmetric function of any $n$-vertex tree containing a vertex of degree $d\geq \log _2n +1$ is not $e$-positive, that is, not a positive linear combination of elementary symmetric functions. Generalizing this, we also prove that the chromatic symmetric function of any $n$-vertex graph containing a cut vertex whose deletion disconnects the graph into $d\geq\log _2n +1$ connected components is not $e$-positive. Furthermore we prove that any $n$-vertex bipartite graph, including all trees, containing a vertex of degree greater than $\lceil \frac{n}{2}\rceil$ is not Schur-positive, namely not a positive linear combination of Schur functions.