Shannon capacity of the seven-cycle

Importance: High ✭✭✭
Author(s):
Subject: Graph Theory
Keywords:
Recomm. for undergrads: no
Posted by: tchow
on: February 19th, 2009
Problem   What is the Shannon capacity of $ C_7 $?

Let $ \alpha(G) $ denote the independence number of the graph $ G $, and let $ G*H $ denote the strong graph product of $ G $ and $ H $ (in which $ (g,h) $ is adjacent to $ (g',h') $ if $ g=g' $ and $ h $ is adjacent to $ h' $, or if $ h=h' $ and $ g $ is adjacent to $ g' $, or if $ g $ is adjacent to $ g' $ and $ h $ is adjacent to $ h' $). Then the Shannon capacity of $ G $ is defined by $$\theta(G) = \lim_{k\to\infty} \biggl({\alpha(G*G*\cdots*G) \over k}\biggr)^{1/k},$$ where the strong graph product is over $ k $ copies of $ G $. The Shannon capacity is important because it represents the effective size of an alphabet in a communication model represented by $ G $, but it is notoriously difficult to compute. Lovász [L] famously proved that the Shannon capacity of the five-cycle $ C_5 $ is $ \sqrt{5} $, but even the Shannon capacity of $ C_7 $ remains unknown. However, Bohman [B] has shown that $$\lim_{k\to\infty}(k+(1/2)-\theta(C_{2k+1}))=0.$$

Bibliography

[B] Tom Bohman, A limit theorem for the Shannon capacity of odd cycles II, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 133 (2005), no. 2, 537-543.

[L] László Lovász, On the Shannon capacity of a graph, IEEE Trans. Inform. Th. IT-25 (1979), 1-7.


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