The cycle-path indicator polynomial of a digraph (Q1585495)

A cycle-path cover of a digraph is a spanning subgraph whose components are paths and cycles. The authors introduce what they call the cycle-path indicator polynomial of a digraph in order to count the cycle-path covers according to their type. They study the properties of this polynomial, in particular, the polynomial satisfies a deletion-contraction recurrence relation. They introduce various specializations, including one that is closely related to the cover polynomial of Chung and Graham, and they also show how a generalization of the rook polynomial can be obtained by the cycle-path indicator polynomial.