Building fences around the chromatic coefficients
Debra Mullins Strickland · Journal of Graph Theory · 1997
Associated to each graph G is its chromatic polynomial f(G, t) and we associate to f(G, t) the sequence α (G) of the norms of its coefficients. A stringent partial ordering is established for such sequences. The main result is that for any graph G with q edges we have α (Rq) ≤ α (G) ≤ α (Sq), where Rq and Sq are specified graphs with q edges. This translates into a clearer view of allowable values and patterns in the chromatic coefficients. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 26: 123–128, 1997