In this paper we give an approximate answer to a question of Nash-Williams from 1970: we show that for every α> 0, every sufficiently large graph on n vertices with minimum degree at least (1/2 + α)n contains at least n/8 edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. More generally, we give an asymptotically best possible answer for the number of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles that a graph G with minimum degree δmust have. We also prove an approximate version of another long-standing conjecture of Nash-Williams: we show that for every α> 0, every (almost) regular and sufficiently large graph on n vertices with minimum degree at least $(1/2 + α)n$ can be almost decomposed into edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles.
Lovász (1965) characterized graphs without two vertex-disjoint cycles, which implies that such graphs have at most three vertices hitting all cycles. In this paper, we ask whether such a small hitting set exists for $S$-cycles, when a graph has no two vertex-disjoint $S$-cycles. For a graph $G$ and a vertex set $S$ of $G$, an $S$-cycle is a cycle containing a vertex of $S$. We provide an example $G$ on $21$ vertices where $G$ has no two vertex-disjoint $S$-cycles, but three vertices are not sufficient to hit all $S$-cycles. On the other hand, we show that four vertices are enough to hit all $S…
Lovász has completely characterised the structure of graphs with no two vertex-disjoint cycles, while Slilaty has given a structural characterisation of graphs with no two vertex-disjoint odd cycles; his result is in fact more general, describing signed graphs with no two vertex-disjoint negative cycles. A biased graph is a graph with a distinguished set of cycles (called balanced) with the property that any theta subgraph does not contain exactly two balanced cycles. In this paper we characterise the structure of biased graphs with no two vertex-disjoint unbalanced cycles, answering a questio…
In this paper, we give spectral conditions to guarantee the existence of two edge disjoint cycles and two cycles of the same length. These two results can be seen as spectral analogues of Erdős and Posa's size condition and Erdős' classic problem on non existence of two cycles of the same length. By using double leading eigenvectors skill, we further give spectral condition to guarantee the existence of $k$ edge disjoint triangles.
Bermond and Thomassen conjectured that every digraph with minimum outdegree at least $2k-1$ contains $k$ vertex disjoint cycles. So far the conjecture was verified for $k\le 3$. Here we generalise the question asking for all outdegree sequences which force $k$ vertex disjoint cycles and give the full answer for $k\le 2$.
In 1963, Corrádi and Hajnal proved that for all $k \ge 1$ and $n \ge 3k$, every (simple) graph on n vertices with minimum degree at least 2k contains k disjoint cycles. The same year, Dirac described the 3-connected multigraphs not containing two disjoint cycles and asked the more general question: Which (2k-1)-connected multigraphs do not contain k disjoint cycles? Recently, the authors characterized the simple graphs G with minimum degree $δ(G) \ge 2k-1$ that do not contain k disjoint cycles. We use this result to answer Dirac's question in full.
Dirac and Lovász independently characterized the $3$-connected graphs with no pair of vertex-disjoint cycles. Equivalently, they characterized all $3$-connected graphs with no prism-minors. In this paper, we completely characterize the $3$-connected graphs with an edge that is contained in the union of no pair of vertex-disjoint cycles. As applications, we answer the analogous questions for edge-disjoint cycles and for $4$-connected graphs and we completely characterize the $3$-connected graphs with no prism-minor using a specified edge.
In this paper, we prove the following conjecture proposed by Gould, Hirohata and Keller [Discrete Math. submitted]: Let $G$ be a graph of sufficiently large order. If $σ_t(G) \geq 2kt - t + 1$ for any two integers $k \geq 2$ and $t \geq 5$, then $G$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles.
In 1963, Corrádi and Hajnal settled a conjecture of Erdős by proving that, for all $k \geq 1$, any graph $G$ with $|G| \geq 3k$ and minimum degree at least $2k$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles. In 2008, Finkel proved that for all $k \geq 1$, any graph $G$ with $|G| \geq 4k$ and minimum degree at least $3k$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint chorded cycles. Finkel's result was strengthened by Chiba, Fujita, Gao, and Li in 2010, who showed, among other results, that for all $k \geq 1$, any graph $G$ with $|G| \geq 4k$ and minimum Ore-degree at least $6k-1$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles. We r…
In 2010, N. Lichiardopol conjectured for $q \geq 3$ and $k \geq 1$ that any tournament with minimum out-degree at least $(q-1)k-1$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles of length $q$. We prove this conjecture for $q \geq 5$. Since it is already known to hold for $q\le4$, this completes the proof of the conjecture.
Let $k \ge 3$ be an integer, $H_{k}(G)$ be the set of vertices of degree at least $2k$ in a graph $G$, and $L_{k}(G)$ be the set of vertices of degree at most $2k-2$ in $G$. In 1963, Dirac and Erdős proved that $G$ contains $k$ (vertex-)disjoint cycles whenever $|H_{k}(G)| - |L_{k}(G)| \ge k^{2} + 2k - 4$. The main result of this paper is that for $k \ge 2$, every graph $G$ with $|V(G)| \ge 3k$ containing at most $t$ disjoint triangles and with $|H_{k}(G)| - |L_{k}(G)| \ge 2k + t$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles. This yields that if $k \ge 2$ and $|H_{k}(G)| - |L_{k}(G)| \ge 3k$, then $G$ contain…
A conjecture by Lichiardopol states that for every $k \ge 1$ there exists an integer $g(k)$ such that every digraph of minimum out-degree at least $g(k)$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint directed cycles of pairwise distinct lengths. Motivated by Lichiardopol's conjecture, we study the existence of vertex-disjoint directed cycles satisfying length constraints in digraphs of large connectivity or large minimum degree. Our main result is that for every $k \in \mathbb{N}$, there exists $s(k) \in \mathbb{N}$ such that every strongly $s(k)$-connected digraph contains $k$ vertex-disjoint directed cycles …
The Bermond-Thomassen conjecture states that, for any positive integer $r$, a digraph of minimum out-degree at least $2r-1$ contains at least $r$ vertex-disjoint directed cycles. Bessy, Sereni and Lichiardopol proved that a regular tournament $T$ of minimum degree $2r-1$ contains at least $r$ vertex-disjoint directed cycles, which shows that the above conjecture is true for tournaments. After that, Lichiardopol improved this result by showing that a $2r-1$-regular tournament contains at least $\frac{7}{6}r-\frac{7}{3}$ vertex-disjoint directed cycles. In this paper, we will extend the result t…
In this paper, we consider a general degree sum condition sufficient to imply the existence of $k$ vertex-disjoint chorded cycles in a graph $G$. Let $σ_t(G)$ be the minimum degree sum of $t$ independent vertices of $G$. We prove that if $G$ is a graph of sufficiently large order and $σ_t(G)\geq 3kt-t+1$ with $k\geq 1$, then $G$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint chorded cycles. We also show that the degree sum condition on $σ_t(G)$ is sharp. To do this, we also investigate graphs without chorded cycles.
Thomassen conjectured that there is a function $f(k)$ such that every strongly $f(k)$-connected tournament contains $k$ edge-disjoint Hamiltonian cycles. This conjecture was recently proved by Kühn, Lapinskas, Osthus, and Patel who showed that $f(k)\leq O(k^2(\log k)^2)$ and conjectured that there is a constant $C$ such that $f(k)\leq Ck^2$. We prove this conjecture.
We show that provided $\log^{50} n/n \leq p \leq 1 - n^{-1/4}\log^9 n$ we can with high probability find a collection of $\lfloor δ(G)/2 \rfloor$ edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in $G \sim G_{n, p}$, plus an additional edge-disjoint matching of size $\lfloor n/2 \rfloor$ if $δ(G)$ is odd. This confirms, for the above range of $p$, a conjecture of Frieze and Krivelevich.
In the 1960s, Erdős and his cooperators initiated the research of the maximum numbers of edges in a graph or a planar graph on $n$ vertices without $k$ edge-disjoint cycles. This problem had been solved for $k\leq4$. As pointed out by Bollobás, it is very difficult for general $k$. Recently, Tait and Tobin [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 2017] confirmed a famous conjecture on maximum spectral radius of $n$-vertex planar graphs. Motivated by the above results, we consider two extremal problems on planar graphs without $k$ edge-disjoint cycles. We first determine the maximum number of edges in a plan…
Let $H_1,\dots,H_k$ be Hamilton cycles in $K_n$, chosen independently and uniformly at random. We show, for $k = o(n^{1/100})$, that the probability of $H_1,\dots,H_k$ being edge-disjoint is $(1+o(1))e^{-2\binom{k}{2}}$. This extends a corresponding estimate obtained by Robbins in the case $k=2$.
We show that every directed graph with minimum out-degree at least $18k$ contains at least $k$ vertex disjoint cycles. This is an improvement over the result of Alon who showed this result for digraphs of minimum out-degree at least $64k$. The main benefit of the argument is that getting better results for small values of $k$ allows for further improvements to the constant.
It is conjectured that every edge-colored complete graph $G$ on $n$ vertices satisfying $Δ^{mon}(G)\leq n-3k+1$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint properly edge-colored cycles. We confirm this conjecture for $k=2$, prove several additional weaker results for general $k$, and we establish structural properties of possible minimum counterexamples to the conjecture. We also reveal a close relationship between properly edge-colored cycles in edge-colored complete graphs and directed cycles in multi-partite tournaments. Using this relationship and our results on edge-colored complete graphs, we obtain se…
Let $k$ be a positive integer. Let $G$ be a balanced bipartite graph of order $2n$ with bipartition $(X, Y)$, and $S$ a subset of $X$. Suppose that every pair of nonadjacent vertices $(x,y)$ with $x\in S, y\in Y$ satisfies $d(x)+d(y)\geq n+1$. We show that if $|S|\geq 2k+2$, then $G$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles covering $S$ such that each of the $k$ cycles contains at least two vertices of $S$. Here, both the degree condition and the lower bound of $|S|$ are best possible. And we also show that if $|S|=2k+1$, then $G$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles such that each of the $k$ cycles contains at l…
In this paper, we show that every planar graph without $4$-cycles and $6$-cycles has a partition of its vertex set into two sets, where one set induces a forest, and the other induces a forest with maximum degree at most $2$ (equivalently, a disjoint union of paths). Note that we can partition the vertex set of a forest into two independent sets. However, a pair of independent sets combined may not induce a forest. Thus our result extends the result of Wang and Xu (2013) stating that the vertex set of every planar graph without $4$-cycles and $6$-cycles can be partitioned into three sets, wher…
The Bermond-Thomassen conjecture states that, for any positive integer $r$, a digraph of minimum out-degree at least $2r-1$ contains at least $r$ vertex-disjoint directed cycles. In 2014, Bang-Jensen, Bessy and Thomass\' e proved the conjecture for tournaments. In 2010, Lichiardopol conjectured that a tournament $T$ with minimum out-degree at least $(q-1)r-1$ contains at least $r$ vertex-disjoint $q$-cycles, where integer $q\geq3$ and $r\geq1$. In this paper, we address Lichiardopol's conjecture affirmatively. In particular, the case $q=3$ implies Bermond-Thomassen conjecture for tournaments.
Understanding how the cycles of a graph or digraph behave in general has always been an important point of graph theory. In this paper, we study the question of finding a set of $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles (resp. directed cycles) of distinct lengths in a given graph (resp. digraph). In the context of undirected graphs, we prove that, for every $k \geq 1$, every graph with minimum degree at least $\frac{k^2+5k-2}{2}$ has $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles of different lengths, where the degree bound is best possible. We also consider stronger situations, and exhibit degree bounds (some of which are best…
Answering a question of Häggkvist and Scott, Verstraëte proved that every sufficiently large graph with average degree at least $k^2+19k+10$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles of consecutive even lengths. He further conjectured that the same holds for every graph $G$ with average degree at least $k^2+3k+2$. In this paper we prove this conjecture for $k\geq 19$ when $G$ is sufficiently large. We also show that for any $ε>0$ and large $k\geq k_ε$, average degree at least $k^2+3k-2+ε$ suffices, which is asymptotically tight for infinitely many graphs.
Let $n\geq 6,k\geq 0$ be two integers. Let $H$ be a graph of order $n$ with $k$ components, each of which is an even cycle of length at least $6$ and $G$ be a bipartite graph with bipartition $(X,Y)$ such that $|X|=|Y|\geq n/2$. In this paper, we show that if the minimum degree of $G$ is at least $n/2-k+1$, then $G$ contains a subdivision of $H$. This generalized an older result of Wang.
Configurations are necklaces with prescribed numbers of red and black beads. Among all possible configurations, the regular one plays an important role in many applications. In this paper, several aspects of regular configurations are discussed, including construction, uniqueness, symmetry group and the link with balanced words. Another model of configurations is the polygons formed by a given number of sides of two different lengths. In this context, regular configurations are used to obtain a lower bound for the cycles packing number of shift graphs, a subclass of the directed circulant grap…
Let $n_{1}$ and $n_{2}$ be two integers with $n_{1},n_{2}\geq3$ and $G$ a graph of order $n=n_{1}+n_{2}$. As a generalization of Ore's degree condition for the existence of Hamilton cycle in $G$, El-Zahar proved that if $δ(G)\geq \left\lceil\frac{n_{1}}{2}\right\rceil+\left\lceil\frac{n_{2}}{2}\right\rceil$ then $G$ contains two disjoint cycles of length $n_{1}$ and $n_{2}$. Recently, Yan et. al considered the problem by extending the degree condition to degree sum condition and proved that if $d(u)+d(v)\geq n+4$ for any pair of non-adjacent vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$, then $G$ contains two d…
In this paper we formulate cycle-supermagic labelings for the disjoint union of isomorphic copies of different families of graphs. We also prove that disjoint union of non isomorphic copies of fans and ladders are cycle-supermagic.
The planar Turán number of a graph $H$, denoted $ex_{_\mathcal{P}}(n,H)$, is the maximum number of edges in a planar graph on $n$ vertices without containing $H$ as a subgraph. This notion was introduced by Dowden in 2016 and has attracted quite some attention since then; those work mainly focus on finding $ex_{_\mathcal{P}}(n,H)$ when $H$ is a cycle or Theta graph or $H$ has maximum degree at least four. In this paper, we study $ex_{_\mathcal{P}}(n,H)$ when $H$ is a cubic graph or disjoint union of cycles or $H=K_{s, t}$.
We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a decomposition of a complete multigraph into edge-disjoint cycles of specified lengths, or into edge-disjoint cycles of specified lengths and a perfect matching.
We prove that, for the edge ideal of a graph whose cycles are pairwise vertex-disjoint, the arithmetical rank is bounded above by the sum of the number of cycles and the maximum height of its associated primes.
In a graph G, the cardinality of the smallest ordered set of vertices that distinguishes every element of V (G)[E(G) is called the mixed metric dimension of G. In this paper we first establish the exact value of the mixed metric dimension of a unicycic graph G which is derived from the structure of G. We further consider graphs G with edge disjoint cycles in which a unicyclic restriction Gi is introduced for each cycle Ci: Applying the result for unicyclic graph to each Gi then yields the exact value of the mixed metric dimension of such a graph G. The obtained formulas for the exact value of …
The Turán number of a $k$-uniform hypergraph $H$, denoted by $e{x_k}\left({n;H} \right)$, is the maximum number of edges in any $k$-uniform hypergraph $F$ on $n$ vertices which does not contain $H$ as a subgraph. Let $\mathcal{C}_{\ell}^{\left(k \right)}$ denote the family of all $k$-uniform minimal cycles of length $\ell$, $\mathcal{S}(\ell_1,\ldots,\ell_r)$ denote the family of hypergraphs consisting of unions of $r$ vertex disjoint minimal cycles of length $\ell_1,\ldots,\ell_r$, respectively, and $\mathbb{C}_{\ell}^{\left(k \right)}$ denote a $k$-uniform linear cycle of length $\ell$. We d…
Let $k$ be a positive integer. Bermond and Thomassen conjectured in 1981 that every digraph with minimum outdegree at least $2k-1$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles. It is famous as one of the one hundred unsolved problems selected in [Bondy, Murty, Graph Theory, Springer-Verlag London, 2008]. Lichiardopol, Por and Sereni proved in [SIAM J. Discrete Math. 23 (2) (2009) 979-992] that the above conjecture holds for $k=3$. Let $g$ be the girth, i.e., the length of the shortest cycle, of a given digraph. Bang-Jensen, Bessy and Thomassé conjectured in [J. Graph Theory 75 (3) (2014) 284-302] that …
The classical Erdős-Pósa theorem states that for each positive integer k there is an f(k) such that, in each graph G which does not have k+1 disjoint cycles, there is a blocker of size at most f(k); that is, a set B of at most f(k) vertices such that G-B has no cycles. We show that, amongst all such graphs on vertex set {1,..,n}, all but an exponentially small proportion have a blocker of size k. We also give further properties of a random graph sampled uniformly from this class; concerning uniqueness of the blocker, connectivity, chromatic number and clique number. A key step in the proof of …
Isaak posed the following problem. Suppose $T$ is a tournament having a minimum feedback arc set which induces an acyclic digraph with a hamiltonian path. Is it true that the maximum number of arc-disjoint cycles in $T$ equals the cardinality of minimum feedback arc set of $T$? We prove that the answer to the problem is in the negative. Further, we study the number of arc-disjoint cycles through a vertex $v$ of the minimum out-degree in an oriented graph $D$. We prove that if $v$ is adjacent to all other vertices, then $v$ belongs to $δ^+(D)$ arc-disjoint cycles.
We show that for any colouring of the edges of the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ with 3 colours there are 5 disjoint monochromatic cycles which together cover all but $o(n)$ of the vertices. In the same situation, 18 disjoint monochromatic cycles together cover all vertices.
In a graph G, cardinality of the smallest ordered set of vertices that distinguishes every element of V (G) is the (vertex) metric dimension of G. Similarly, the cardinality of such a set is the edge metric dimension of G, if it distinguishes E(G). In this paper these invariants are considered first for unicyclic graphs, and it is shown that the vertex and edge metric dimensions obtain values from two particular consecutive integers, which can be determined from the structure of the graph. In particular, as a consequence, we obtain that these two invariants can differ for at most one for a sam…
The dicycle transversal number t(D) of a digraph D is the minimum size of a dicycle transversal of D, i. e. a set T of vertices of D such that D-T is acyclic. We study the following problem: Given a digraph D, decide if there is a dicycle B in D and a cycle C in the underlying undirected graph of D such such that B,C are disjoint. It is known that there is a polynomial time algorithm for this problem when restricted to strongly connected graphs, which actually finds B,C if they exist. We generalize this to any class of digraphs D with either t(D) not equal to 1 or t(D)=1 and a bounded number o…
We give a description of the cycle structure of the Heawood graph, $C_{14}$. In particular, we prove that the automorphism group of $C_{14}$ acts transitively on the set of $12$-cycles, Hamiltonian cycles, and disjoint pairs of $6$-cycles. We also enumerate $12$-, $10$-, and $8$-cycles in $C_{14}$, as well as pairs of disjoint $6$-cycles.
We show that if $C_1$ and $C_2$ are directed cycles (of length at least two), then the Cartesian product $C_1 \Box C_2$ has two arc-disjoint hamiltonian paths. (This answers a question asked by J. A. Gallian in 1985.) The same conclusion also holds for the Cartesian product of any four or more directed cycles (of length at least two), but some cases remain open for the Cartesian product of three directed cycles. We also discuss the existence of arc-disjoint hamiltonian paths in $2$-generated Cayley digraphs on (finite or infinite) abelian groups.
In 1963, Corrádi and Hajnal proved that for all $k\geq1$ and $n\geq3k$, every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with minimum degree $δ(G)\geq2k$ contains $k$ disjoint cycles. The bound $δ(G) \geq 2k$ is sharp. Here we characterize those graphs with $δ(G)\geq2k-1$ that contain $k$ disjoint cycles. This answers the simple-graph case of Dirac's 1963 question on the characterization of $(2k-1)$-connected graphs with no $k$ disjoint cycles. Enomoto and Wang refined the Corrádi-Hajnal Theorem, proving the following Ore-type version: For all $k\geq1$ and $n\geq3k$, every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices contains $k…
The spined cube $SQ_n$ is a variant of the hypercube $Q_n$, introduced by Zhou et al. in [Information Processing Letters 111 (2011) 561-567] as an interconnection network for parallel computing. A graph $\G$ is an $m$-Cayley graph if its automorphism group $\Aut(\G)$ has a semiregular subgroup acting on the vertex set with $m$ orbits, and is a Caley graph if it is a 1-Cayley graph. It is well-known that $Q_n$ is a Cayley graph of an elementary abelian 2-group $\mz_2^n$ of order $2^n$. In this paper, we prove that $SQ_n$ is a 4-Cayley graph of $\mz_2^{n-2}$ when $n\geq6$, and is a $\lfloor n/2\…
Let $k \geq 3$ be an integer, $h_{k}(G)$ be the number of vertices of degree at least $2k$ in a graph $G$, and $\ell_{k}(G)$ be the number of vertices of degree at most $2k-2$ in $G$. Dirac and Erdős proved in 1963 that if $h_{k}(G) - \ell_{k}(G) \geq k^{2} + 2k - 4$, then $G$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles. For each $k\geq 2$, they also showed an infinite sequence of graphs $G_k(n)$ with $h_{k}(G_k(n)) - \ell_{k}(G_k(n)) = 2k-1$ such that $G_k(n)$ does not have $k$ disjoint cycles. Recently, the authors proved that, for $k \geq 2$, a bound of $3k$ is sufficient to guarantee the existence…
A classic result of Erdős and Pósa says that any graph contains either $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles or can be made acyclic by deleting at most $O(k \log k)$ vertices. Here we generalize this result by showing that for all numbers $k$ and $l$ and for every graph $G$, either $G$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles of length at least $l$, or there exists a set $X$ of $\mathcal O(kl+k\log k)$ vertices that meets all cycles of length at least $l$ in $G$. As a corollary, the tree-width of any graph $G$ that does not contain $k$ vertex-disjoint cycles of length at least $l$ is of order $\mathcal O(kl+k…
Let $G$ be an $n$-node graph without two disjoint odd cycles. The algorithm of Artmann, Weismantel and Zenklusen (STOC'17) for bimodular integer programs can be used to find a maximum weight stable set in $G$ in strongly polynomial time. Building on structural results characterizing sufficiently connected graphs without two disjoint odd cycles, we construct a size-$O(n^2)$ extended formulation for the stable set polytope of $G$.
Decomposing an Eulerian graph into a minimum respectively maximum number of edge disjoint cycles is an NP-complete problem. We prove that an Eulerian graph decomposes into a unique number of cycles if and only if it does not contain two edge disjoint cycles sharing three or more vertices. To this end, we discuss the interplay of three binary graph operators leading to novel constructive characterizations of two subclasses of Eulerian graphs. This enables us to present a polynomial-time algorithm which decides whether the number of cycles in a cycle decomposition of a given Eulerian graph is un…
