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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.0 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it

Some cities of Russia are connected with some cities of Ukraine with international airlines. The Interstate Council for the Promotion of Migration intends to introduce a one-way traffic on each airline so that, by taking off from the city, it could no longer be returned in this city (using other one-way airlines). Prove that the number of ways to do this is not divided by 33.

Solution

To prove that the number of ways to introduce a one-way traffic on each airline such that no city can be returned to (using other one-way airlines) is not divisible by 3, we can use the properties of the chromatic polynomial of a bipartite graph.

1. Restate the problem in graph theory terms:
We are given a bipartite graph G G and need to show that the number of acyclic orientations of G G is not a multiple of 3. It is known that the number of acyclic orientations of a graph G G is given by χG(1) |\chi_G(-1)| , where χG \chi_G is the chromatic polynomial of G G .

2. Chromatic polynomial evaluation:
The chromatic polynomial χG(k) \chi_G(k) of a graph G G counts the number of ways to color the vertices of G G with k k colors such that no two adjacent vertices share the same color. For a bipartite graph G G , the chromatic polynomial can be evaluated at specific points to derive properties about the graph.

3. **Evaluate χG(1) \chi_G(-1) :**
We need to show that 3χG(1) 3 \nmid \chi_G(-1) . To do this, we use the known result that for a bipartite graph G G , χG(1)χG(2)(mod3) \chi_G(-1) \equiv \chi_G(2) \pmod{3} .

4. **Evaluate χG(2) \chi_G(2) :**
For a bipartite graph G G , the chromatic polynomial evaluated at 2, χG(2) \chi_G(2) , counts the number of ways to color the graph with 2 colors. Since G G is bipartite, it can be colored with 2 colors in exactly 2c 2^c ways, where c c is the number of connected components of G G .

5. Modulo 3 calculation:
Since χG(2)=2c \chi_G(2) = 2^c , we need to evaluate 2c(mod3) 2^c \pmod{3} . Note that:
212(mod3),221(mod3),232(mod3),241(mod3),and so on. 2^1 \equiv 2 \pmod{3}, \quad 2^2 \equiv 1 \pmod{3}, \quad 2^3 \equiv 2 \pmod{3}, \quad 2^4 \equiv 1 \pmod{3}, \quad \text{and so on.}
Therefore, 2c 2^c modulo 3 alternates between 2 and 1 depending on whether c c is odd or even.

6. Conclusion:
Since 2c1 2^c \equiv 1 or 2(mod3) 2 \pmod{3} , it follows that 2c 2^c is never divisible by 3. Hence, χG(2)≢0(mod3) \chi_G(2) \not\equiv 0 \pmod{3} .

7. Final step:
Since χG(1)χG(2)(mod3) \chi_G(-1) \equiv \chi_G(2) \pmod{3} , and χG(2)≢0(mod3) \chi_G(2) \not\equiv 0 \pmod{3} , it follows that χG(1)≢0(mod3) \chi_G(-1) \not\equiv 0 \pmod{3} .

\blacksquare

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.