Bounds for the rank of a complex unit gain graph in terms of the independence number
A complex unit gain graph (or $\mathbb{T}$-gain graph) is a triple $Φ=(G, \mathbb{T}, φ)$ ($(G, φ)$ for short) consisting of a graph $G$ as the underlying graph of $(G, φ)$, $\mathbb{T}= \{ z \in C:|z|=1 \} $ is a subgroup of the multiplicative group of all nonzero complex numbers $\mathbb{C}^{\times}$ and a gain function $φ: \overrightarrow{E} \rightarrow \mathbb{T}$ such that $φ(e_{ij})=φ(e_{ji})^{-1}=\overline{φ(e_{ji})}$. In this paper, we investigate the relation among the rank, the independence number and the cyclomatic number of a complex unit gain graph $(G, φ)$ with order $n$, and prove that $2n-2c(G) \leq r(G, φ)+2α(G) \leq 2n$. Where $r(G, φ)$, $α(G)$ and $c(G)$ are the rank of the Hermitian adjacency matrix $A(G, φ)$, the independence number and the cyclomatic number of $G$, respectively. Furthermore, the properties of the complex unit gain graph that reaching the lower bound are characterized.