Combinatorics of signed oriented graphs/skew-symmetric matrices

2010-06-16T08:08:09Z

Consider a "complete" signed graph on $n$ vertices indexed by $1,2,\dots,n$, that is, a graph in which any two distinct vertices $i$ and $j$ are connected by an oriented edge. For each pair of vertices $i$ and $j$, write $v_{ij}=1$ or $-1$ depending on whether the connecting edge goes from $i$ to $j$ or from $j$ to $i$, respectively, and $v_{ii}=0$. The corresponding adjacency matrix $V=(v_{ij})_{1\le i,j\le n}$ is a skew-symmetric matrix with entries $\pm1$ only outside the main diagonal. In particular, its determinant is 0 for $n$ odd and nonnegative for $n$ even; by a simple parity argument it can be shown that $\det(V)$ is odd (hence positive) in the latter case. On the other hand, $\det(V)$ seems to assume all possible odd positive values restricted only by Hadamard's_inequality.

My general question is whether the condition $\det(V)=1$ imposes some known combinatorial structure in the set of complete signed oriented graphs (or maybe in a reasonable subset of this set). Some kind of related questions is whether the matrix $V$ in general imposes some interesting combinatorial structure of the underlying graph (I even do not the answer in the case when $v_{ij}$ depends only on the distance $i-j$, that is, $v_{ij}=\epsilon_{i-j}$).

Combinatorics of signed oriented graphs/skew-symmetric matrices - MathOverflow

Combinatorics of signed oriented graphs/skew-symmetric matrices