Characteristic polynomials of nonnegative real square matrices and generalized clique polynomials (Q972787)

Let \(C\) be a finite undirected graph with no multiple edges or loops. First, the author proposes an extension of the notion of a clique polynomial, denoted by \(PG_C(x)\), as follows: \(PG_C(x) = 1 + \sum_B(-1)^{|B|} (\prod _{s \in B} \alpha _s x^{d_s})\), where the summation varies over all complete subgraphs \(B\) of \(C\) and \(|B|\) denotes the cardinality of \(B\). Here \(\prod _{s \in B} \alpha _s x^{d_s}\) is defined to be the weight of the subgraph \(B\). This polynomial is called the generalized clique polynomial. The author then proceeds to demonstrate that the generalized clique polynomials are exactly the reciprocals of the characteristic polynomials of matrices with nonnegative real coefficients.