A quantitative way to e-positivity of trees

Abstract: In 1997, Wolfgang proved that every connected graph having $e$-positive chromatic symmetric function must contain connected partitions of every type. In this paper, we refine this result by a quantitative way in the special case of trees. At first, we give a formula for calculating $e$-coefficients of trees in terms of their connected partitions. Based on this formula, we present several necessary conditions on the number of connected partitions or acyclic orientations for trees to be $e$-positive. As an application, we prove the non-$e$-positivity of a class of caterpillars which have connected partitions of all type. Moreover, we give a necessary condition for caterpillars to be $e$-positive, which may be applied to provide more evidence to the conjecture of Dahlberg, She, and van Willigenburg that every tree of maximum degree at least 4 is non-$e$-positive.