arxivcs.ITcs.AIcs.DMmath.CO2026-07-23
Improved lower bounds for the Shannon capacity of odd cycles
Nathaniel Itty, Christopher D. Rosin, Chase Carstensen, Daniel Reichman
The Shannon capacity $Θ(G)$ of a graph $G$ quantifies the maximum rate at which information can be transmitted with zero error over a noisy channel. It is lower bounded by $α(G^d)^{1/d}$ for any $d$, where $α(G^d)$ is the independence number of the $d$-th strong power of $G$. We…