Visibility polynomials, dual visibility spectrum, and characterization of total mutual-visibility sets
arXiv:2412.03066 · doi:10.1007/s00010-025-01197-y
Abstract
Mutual-visibility sets were motivated by visibility in distributed systems and social networks, and intertwine with several classical mathematical areas. Monotone properties of the variety of mutual-visibility sets, and restrictions of such sets to convex and isometric subgraphs are studied. Dual mutual-visibility sets are shown to be intrinsically different from other types of mutual-visibility sets. It is proved that for every finite subset of positive integers there exists a graph that has a dual mutual-visibility set of size if and only if , while for the other types of mutual-visibility such a set consists of consecutive integers. Visibility polynomials are introduced and their properties derived. As a surprise, every polynomial with nonnegative integer coefficients and with a constant term is a dual visibility polynomial of some graph. Characterizations are given for total mutual-visibility sets, for graphs with total mutual-visibility number , and for sets which are not total mutual-visibility sets, yet every proper subset is such. Along the way an earlier result from the literature is corrected.