Chromatic polynomials and their zeros and asymptotic limits for families of graphs (Q5937607)

In this paper recursively defined families of graphs \(G_{m}\) depending on a positive integer parameter \(m\) are considered, for which the chromatic polynomials \(P(G_{m},q)\) are related by a linear homogeneous recurrence relation in which the coefficients are polynomials in \(q\). These include strips of regular lattices, chains of polygons linked in various ways, joins of such graphs with another graph, and families obtained from these by homeomorphic expansions. By defining \(W=\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}P(G,q)^{1/n}\), this paper surveys exact calculations of \(P\) and \(W\) for a variety of recursive families of graphs, including strips of regular lattices with various boundary conditions and homeomorphic expansions thereof. Generalizing to \(q\in C\), the accumulation sets of the chromatic zeros are determined, which constitute the continuous loci of points on which \(W\) is nonanalytic. Conditions for the chromatic zeros and their accumulation set to (i) include support for \(\text{Re}(q)<0\); (ii) to bound regions; and (iii) to be noncompact are discussed, and the role of boundary conditions is analyzed. Some corresponding results are presented for Potts model partition functions for nonzero temperature, equivalent to the full Tutte polynomials for various families of graphs.