Signatures and signed switching classes (Q1074603)

A signing of a graph G is a function f: E(G)\(\to \{+,-\}\). The pair (G,f) is called a signed graph. For a graph G and set \(X\subseteq V(G)\), let \(f_ X\) be the signing obtained from f by reversing the sign of each edge incident with exactly one vertex in X. If \(g=f_ X\) for some \(X\subseteq V(G)\), then f and g are called switching equivalent. This determines an equivalence relation, the resulting equivalence classes of which are called signed switching classes of G. If f is a signing of a complete graph G, then the signature sig(f) is the set of triangles T of G for which \(f(a)f(b)f(c)=-\), where \(E(T)=\{a,b,c\}\). In this paper, the authors develop a theory of signed switching classes and signatures using homological algebra.