Review of functions:
A function
is one-to-one, if no two elements of
have the same image. So if
, then
. In other words, every element of
has at
most one pre-image.
A function
is onto, if every element of
has at
least one
pre-image. So for every element
, there exists an element
so that
.
A function
is a bijection if it is one-to-one and
onto. Note that this implies that every element in
has
exactly one pre-image.
For a bijection we can form the inverse
function
, where
precisely when
.
If
is a bijection, then
Isomorphism
An (undirected) graph is isomorphic to another
graph
if there exists a bijection
so that, for all
,
The bijection is called a graph isomorphism.
Similarly:
A directed graph is isomorphic to another
digraph
if there exists a bijection
so that, for all
,