The Cycle Space Over A Field or Commutative Ring
The construction of the integral cycle space can be carried out for any field, abelian group, or (most generally) commutative ring (with unity) R replacing the integers. If R is a field, the cycle space is a vector space over R with dimension m - n + c, where c is the number of connected components of G. If R is any commutative ring, the cycle space is a free R-module with rank m - n + c.
When R is an abelian group such a cycle may also be called an R-flow on G. Nowhere-zero R-flows for a finite abelian group R of k elements are related to nowhere-zero integral k-flows in Tutte's theory. The number of nowhere-zero R-cycles is an evaluation of the Tutte polynomial, dual to the number of proper colorings of the graph (Tutte, 1984, Section IX.4).
Read more about this topic: Cycle Space
Famous quotes containing the words cycle, space, field and/or ring:
“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.”
—Dorothy Parker (18931967)
“It is the space inside that gives the drum its sound.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 1189, lelo NoEau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“He stung me first and stung me afterward.
He rolled me off the field head over heels
And would not listen to my explanations.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. Ive fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobodys going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless Im crazy or I keep getting better.”
—Ernest Hemingway (18991961)