Isomorphism of weighted trees and Stanley's isomorphism conjecture for caterpillars (Q2327720)

Summary: This paper contributes to a programme initiated by the first author: ``How much information about a graph is revealed in its Potts partition function?'' We show that the \(W\)-polynomial distinguishes non-isomorphic weighted trees of a good family. The framework developed to do so also allows us to show that the \(W\)-polynomial distinguishes non-isomorphic caterpillars. This establishes Stanley's conjecture for caterpillars, an extensively studied problem.