On the edge reconstruction of the characteristic and permanental polynomials of a simple graph

Jingyuan Zhang, Xian'an Jin, Weigen Yan, Qinghai Liu

Published 2023-10-11Version 1

As a variant of the Ulam's vertex reconstruction conjecture and the Harary's edge reconstruction conjecture, Cvetkovi\'c and Schwenk posed independently the following problem: Can the characteristic polynomial of a simple graph $G$ with vertex set $V$ be reconstructed from the characteristic polynomials of all subgraphs in $\{G-v|v\in V\}$ for $|V|\geq 3$? This problem is still open. A natural problem is: Can the characteristic polynomial of a simple graph $G$ with edge set $E$ be reconstructed from the characteristic polynomials of all subgraphs in $\{G-e|e\in E\}$? In this paper, we prove that if $|V|\neq |E|$, then the characteristic polynomial of $G$ can be reconstructed from the characteristic polynomials of all subgraphs in $\{G-uv, G-u-v|uv\in E\}$, and the similar result holds for the permanental polynomial of $G$. We also prove that the Laplacian (resp. signless Laplacian) characteristic polynomial of $G$ can be reconstructed from the Laplacian (resp. signless Laplacian) characteristic polynomials of all subgraphs in $\{G-e|e\in E\}$ (resp. if $|V|\neq |E|$).