Complexity of the cover polynomial

Abstract

The cover polynomial introduced by Chung and Graham is a two-variate graph polynomial for directed graphs. It counts the (weighted) number of ways to cover a graph with disjoint directed cycles and paths, it is an interpolation between determinant and permanent, and it is believed to be a directed analogue of the Tutte polynomial. Jaeger, Vertigan, and Welsh showed that the Tutte polynomial is #P-hard to evaluate at all but a few special points and curves. It turns out that the same holds for the cover polynomial: We prove that, in almost the whole plane, the problem of evaluating the cover polynomial is #P-hard under polynomial-time Turing reductions, while only three points are easy. Our construction uses a gadget which is easier to analyze and more general than the XOR-gadget used by Valiant in his proof that the permanent is #P-complete. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.