On evaluation of the characteristic polynomial for large molecules

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Abstract
Existing schemes for evaluation of the characteristic polynomial of a graph suffer from limited practicality. Their application to large molecules inordinately increases the amount of labor. Here a procedure is outlined which is useful even for large molecules. It is based on a not widely known property of the collection of characteristic polynomials for Ulam's subgraphs, which, when added, give the derivative of the characteristic polynomial of the initial graph. The characteristic polynomials for Ulam's subgraphs are, as a rule, easier to derive due to the presence of many pending bonds in graphs of chemical interest. The last step requires an integration of a polynomial (which is a straightforward step) and determining the constant of integration, which represents the determinant of the adjacency matrix. The available methods for determing the additive constant (the determinant) are combinatorially much simpler than the initial task of finding all of the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial. The approach is illustrated on selected benzenoid hydrocarbons, nonbenzenoid, and nonalternant systems. Construction of the characteristic polynomials can be accelerated by considering auxiliary fragments and irreducible subgraphs separately and combining them in the final expression. Many auxiliary fragments allow their characteristic polynomials to be expressed in a closed form using recursive relations. The results for complex molecules can thus be written in a relatively compact form. Finally, the derivative of the characteristic polynomial, expressed in terms of selected auxiliary functions and irreducible components, can be integrated directly to give the result in terms of contributions signifying various fragments rather than as an explicit function of x.

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