Permanents of hexagonal and armchair chains (Q2690437)

Summary: The permanent is important invariants of a graph with some applications in physics. If \(G\) is a graph with adjacency matrix \(A=\left[ a_{i j}\right]\), then the permanent of \(A\) is defined as \(\operatorname{perm}\left( A\right)= \sum_{\sigma \in S_n} \prod_{i = 1}^n a_{i \sigma \left( i\right)} \), where \(S_n\) denotes the symmetric group on \(n\) symbols. In this paper, the general form of the adjacency matrices of hexagonal and armchair chains will be computed. As a consequence of our work, it is proved that if \(G\left[ k\right]\) and \(H\left[ k\right]\) denote the hexagonal and armchair chains, respectively, then \(\operatorname{perm}\left( A \left( G \left[ 1\right]\right)\right)=4\), \(\operatorname{perm}\left( A \left( G \left[ k\right]\right)\right)= \left( k + 1\right)^2\), \(k\geq2\), and \(\operatorname{perm}\left( A \left( H \left[ k\right]\right)\right)= 4^k\) with \(k\geq1\). One question about the permanent of a hexagonal zig-zag chain is also presented.