Chromatic polynomial product over components
ID: chromatic-polynomial-product-over-components
For connected components of a graph of a finite graph , choices of proper vertex colourings on different connected components of a graph are independent. The multiplication principle gives . Each nonempty factor is divisible by , hence divides the chromatic polynomial. The vanishing constant term follows by mathematical induction from the deletion-contraction recurrence for the chromatic polynomial, starting with for a nonempty graph without edges.
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