Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Find exact or asymptotic formulae for the number of labelled graphs of order n having a certain property. The property we are interested in in this note is that of being k-coloured and having connectivity at least l. Special cases of this problem have been tackled by many authors; in particular Gilbert [6], Read [9] and Robinson [11] found exact formulae, and Read and Wright [10], and Wright [12], [13] found asymptotic expressions (for many other examples see [7]). Recently Harary and Robinson [8] counted labelled bipartite blocks, that is 2-connected bipartite graphs. (For terms not defined here and general background in graph theory see [1].) Our present investigations have been prompted by [8]; in particular, as a very special case of our results, we shall prove the conjecture published in [8].
The exact formulae appearing in the enumeration of labelled graphs in general, and in the enumeration of k-coloured labelled graphs in particular, tend to be very pleasing, especially because of the functional equations relating them.