Lovasz and Plummer conjectured in the 1970's that cubic bridgeless graphs have exponentially many perfect matchings. This conjecture has been verified for bipartite graphs by Voorhoeve in 1979, and for planar graphs by Chudnovsky and Seymour in 2008, but in general only linear bounds are known. In this paper, we provide the first superlinear bound in the general case.
A conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson (1971) states that every cubic bridgeless graph contains 6 perfect matchings covering each edge precisely twice, which easily implies that every cubic bridgeless graph has three perfect matchings with empty intersection (this weaker statement was conjectured by Fan and Raspaud in 1994). Let $m_t$ be the supremum of all reals $α\le 1$ such that for every cubic bridgeless graph $G$, there exist $t$ perfect matchings of $G$ covering a fraction of at least $α$ of the edges of $G$. It is known that the Berge-Fulkerson conjecture is equivalent to the statement tha…
It follows from the work of Tait and the Four-Color-Theorem that a planar cubic graph is 3-edge-colorable if and only if it contains no bridge. We consider the question of which planar graphs are subgraphs of planar cubic bridgeless graphs, and hence 3-edge-colorable. We provide an efficient recognition algorithm that given an $n$-vertex planar graph, augments this graph in $O(n^2)$ steps to a planar cubic bridgeless supergraph, or decides that no such augmentation is possible. The main tools involve the Generalized Antifactor-problem for the fixed embedding case, and SPQR-trees for the variab…
Berge Conjecture states that every bridgeless cubic graph has 5 perfect matchings such that each edge is contained in at least one of them. In this paper, we show that Berge Conjecture holds for two classes of cubic graphs, cubic graphs with a circuit missing only one vertex and bridgeless cubic graphs with a 2-factor consisting of two circuits. The first part of this result implies that Berge Conjecture holds for hypohamiltonian cubic graphs.
A \emph{$k$--bisection} of a bridgeless cubic graph $G$ is a $2$--colouring of its vertex set such that the colour classes have the same cardinality and all connected components in the two subgraphs induced by the colour classes have order at most $k$. Ban and Linial conjectured that {\em every bridgeless cubic graph admits a $2$--bisection except for the Petersen graph}. In this note, we prove Ban--Linial's conjecture for claw--free cubic graphs.
We show that every edge in a 2-edge-connected planar cubic graph is either contained in a 2-edge-cut or is a chord of some cycle that is contained in a 2-factor of the graph. As a consequence, we show that every edge in a cyclically 4-edge-connected planar cubic graph, except $K_2^3$ and $K_4$, is contained in a perfect matching whose removal disconnects the graph. We obtain a complete characterization of 2-edge-connected planar cubic graphs that have an edge such that every 2-factor containing the edge is a Hamiltonian cycle, and also of those that have an edge such that the complement of eve…
In an edge-coloring of a cubic graph, an edge is poor or rich, if the set of colors assigned to the edge and the four edges adjacent it, has exactly five or exactly three distinct colors, respectively. An edge is normal in an edge-coloring if it is rich or poor in this coloring. A normal $k$-edge-coloring of a cubic graph is an edge-coloring with $k$ colors such that each edge of the graph is normal. We denote by $χ'_{N}(G)$ the smallest $k$, for which $G$ admits a normal $k$-edge-coloring. Normal edge-colorings were introduced by Jaeger in order to study his well-known Petersen Coloring Conje…
In 1994, it was conjectured by Fan and Raspaud that every simple bridgeless cubic graph has three perfect matchings whose intersection is empty. In this paper we answer a question recently proposed by Mkrtchyan and Vardanyan, by giving an equivalent formulation of the Fan-Raspaud Conjecture. We also study a possibly weaker conjecture originally proposed by the first author, which states that in every simple bridgeless cubic graph there exist two perfect matchings such that the complement of their union is a bipartite graph. Here, we show that this conjecture can be equivalently stated using a …
Let $G$ be a bridgeless cubic graph. The Berge--Fulkerson Conjecture (1970s) states that $G$ admits a list of six perfect matchings such that each edge of $G$ belongs to exactly two of these perfect matchings. If answered in the affirmative, two other recent conjectures would also be true: the Fan--Raspaud Conjecture (1994), which states that $G$ admits three perfect matchings such that every edge of $G$ belongs to at most two of them; and a conjecture by Mazzuoccolo (2013), which states that $G$ admits two perfect matchings whose deletion yields a bipartite subgraph of $G$. It can be shown th…
A well-known conjecture by Lovász and Plummer from the 1970s asserted that a bridgeless cubic graph has exponentially many perfect matchings. It was solved in the affirmative by Esperet et al. (Adv. Math. 2011). On the other hand, Chudnovsky and Seymour (Combinatorica 2012) proved the conjecture in the special case of cubic planar graphs. In our work we consider random bridgeless cubic planar graphs with the uniform distribution on graphs with $n$ vertices. Under this model we show that the expected number of perfect matchings in labeled bridgeless cubic planar graphs is asymptotically $cγ^n$,…
The Fan-Raspaud Conjecture states that every bridgeless cubic graph has three 1-factors with empty intersection. A weaker one than this conjecture is that every bridgeless cubic graph has two 1-factors and one join with empty intersection. Both of these two conjectures can be related to conjectures on Fano-flows. In this paper, we show that these two conjectures are equivalent to some statements on cores and weak cores of a bridgeless cubic graph. In particular, we prove that the Fan-Raspaud Conjecture is equivalent to a conjecture proposed in [E. Steffen, 1-factor and cycle covers of cubic gr…
In a proper edge-coloring of a cubic graph, an edge $e$ is normal if the set of colors used by the edges adjacent to $e$ has cardinality 3 or 5. The Petersen coloring conjecture asserts that every bridgeless cubic graph has a normal 5-edge-coloring, that is, a proper 5-edge-coloring such that all edges are normal. In this paper, we prove a result related to the Petersen coloring conjecture. The parameter $μ_3$ is a measurement for cubic graphs, introduced by Steffen in 2015. Our result shows that every bridgeless cubic graph $G$ has a proper 5-edge-coloring such that at least $|E(G)|-μ_3(G)$, …
A bridgeless cubic graph $G$ is said to have a 2-bisection if there exists a 2-vertex-colouring of $G$ (not necessarily proper) such that: (i) the colour classes have the same cardinality, and (ii) the monochromatic components are either an isolated vertex or an edge. In 2016, Ban and Linial conjectured that every bridgeless cubic graph, apart from the well-known Petersen graph, admits a 2-bisection. In the same paper it was shown that every Class I bridgeless cubic graph admits such a bisection. The Class II bridgeless cubic graphs which are critical to many conjectures in graph theory are kn…
Given a bridgeless graph $G$, the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture posits that there is a list of cycles of $G$, such that every edge appears in exactly two cycles on the list. This conjecture was originally posed independently in 1973 by Szekeres and 1979 by Seymour. In 1985, Jaeger demonstrated that it is sufficient to prove in the case that $G$ is a cubic graph. We here present a proof that every bridgeless cubic graph has a cycle double cover by analyzing certain kinds of cycles in the line graph of $G$. Further, in the case that $G$ is cubic, we prove the stronger conjecture that given a bri…
Let $G$ be a bridgeless cubic graph. Consider a list of $k$ 1-factors of $G$. Let $E_i$ be the set of edges contained in precisely $i$ members of the $k$ 1-factors. Let $μ_k(G)$ be the smallest $|E_0|$ over all lists of $k$ 1-factors of $G$. Any list of three 1-factors induces a core of a cubic graph. We use results on the structure of cores to prove sufficient conditions for Berge-covers and for the existence of three 1-factors with empty intersection. Furthermore, if $μ_3(G) \not = 0$, then $2 μ_3(G)$ is an upper bound for the girth of $G$. We also prove some new upper bounds for the length …
Tutte's 5-Flow Conjecture from 1954 states that every bridgeless graph has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. In 2004, Kochol proved that the conjecture is equivalent to its restriction on cyclically 6-edge connected cubic graphs. We prove that every cyclically 6-edge-connected cubic graph with oddness at most 4 has a nowhere-zero 5-flow.
A normal $k$-edge-coloring of a cubic graph is an edge-coloring with $k$ colors having the additional property that when looking at the set of colors assigned to any edge $e$ and the four edges adjacent it, we have either exactly five distinct colors or exactly three distinct colors. We denote by $χ'_{N}(G)$ the smallest $k$, for which $G$ admits a normal $k$-edge-coloring. Normal $k$-edge-colorings were introduced by Jaeger in order to study his well-known Petersen Coloring Conjecture. More precisely, it is known that proving $χ'_{N}(G)\leq 5$ for every bridgeless cubic graph is equivalent to…
Bouchet conjectured in 1983 that every flow-admissible signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 6-flow which is equivalent to the restriction to cubic signed graphs. In this paper, we proved that every flow-admissible $3$-edge-colorable cubic signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $10$-flow. This together with the 4-color theorem implies that every flow-admissible bridgeless planar signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $10$-flow. As a byproduct, we also show that every flow-admissible hamiltonian signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $8$-flow.
The Petersen colouring conjecture states that every bridgeless cubic graph admits an edge-colouring with $5$ colours such that for every edge $e$, the set of colours assigned to the edges adjacent to $e$ has cardinality either $2$ or $4$, but not $3$. We prove that every bridgeless cubic graph $G$ admits an edge-colouring with $4$ colours such that at most $\frac45\cdot|V(G)|$ edges do not satisfy the above condition. This bound is tight and the Petersen graph is the only connected graph for which the bound cannot be decreased. We obtain such a $4$-edge-colouring by using a carefully chosen su…
It is conjectured by Berge and Fulkerson that every bridgeless cubic graph has six perfect matchings such that each edge is contained in exactly two of them. H$\ddot{a}$gglund constructed two graphs Blowup$(K_4, C)$ and Blowup$(Prism, C_4)$. Based on these two graphs, Chen constructed infinite families of bridgeless cubic graphs $M_{0,1,2, \ldots,k-2, k-1}$ which is obtained from cyclically 4-edge-connected and having a Fulkerson-cover cubic graphs $G_0,G_1,\ldots, G_{k-1}$ by recursive process. If each $G_i$ for $1\leq i\leq k-1$ is a cyclically 4-edge-connected snarks with excessive index at…
A snark is a bridgeless cubic graph which is not 3-edge-colourable. The oddness of a bridgeless cubic graph is the minimum number of odd components in any 2-factor of the graph. Lukot'ka, Mácajová, Mazák and Škoviera showed in [Electron. J. Combin. 22 (2015)] that the smallest snark with oddness 4 has 28 vertices and remarked that there are exactly two such graphs of that order. However, this remark is incorrect as -- using an exhaustive computer search -- we show that there are in fact three snarks with oddness 4 on 28 vertices. In this note we present the missing snark and also determine all…
A $k$-bisection of a bridgeless cubic graph $G$ is a $2$-colouring of its vertex set such that the colour classes have the same cardinality and all connected components in the two subgraphs induced by the colour classes (monochromatic components in what follows) have order at most $k$. Ban and Linial conjectured that every bridgeless cubic graph admits a $2$-bisection except for the Petersen graph. A similar problem for the edge set of cubic graphs has been studied: Wormald conjectured that every cubic graph $G$ with $|E(G)| \equiv 0 \pmod 2$ has a $2$-edge colouring such that the two monochro…
The perfect matching index of a cubic graph $G$, denoted by $π(G)$, is the smallest number of perfect matchings that cover all the edges of $G$. According to the Berge-Fulkerson conjecture, $π(G)\le5$ for every bridgeless cubic graph~$G$. The class of graphs with $π\ge 5$ is of particular interest as many conjectures and open problems, including the famous cycle double cover conjecture, can be reduced to it. Although nontrivial examples of such graphs are very difficult to find, a few infinite families are known, all with circular flow number $Φ_c(G)=5$. It has been therefore suggested [Electr…
A cycle cover of a graph is a collection of cycles such that each edge of the graph is contained in at least one of the cycles. The length of a cycle cover is the sum of all cycle lengths in the cover. We prove that every bridgeless cubic graph with $m$ edges has a cycle cover of length at most $212/135 \cdot m \ (\approx 1.570 m)$. Moreover, if the graph is cyclically $4$-edge-connected we obtain a cover of length at most $47/30 \cdot m \approx 1.567 m$.
We show that every bridgeless cubic graph $G$ with $m$ edges has a cycle cover of length at most $1.6 m$. Moreover, if $G$ does not contain any intersecting circuits of length $5$, then $G$ has a cycle cover of length $212/135 \cdot m \approx 1.570 m$ and if $G$ contains no $5$-circuits, then it has a cycle cover of length at most $14/9 \cdot m \approx 1.556 m$. To prove our results, we show that each $2$-edge-connected cubic graph $G$ on $n$ vertices has a $2$-factor containing at most $n/10+f(G)$ circuits of length $5$, where the value of $f(G)$ only depends on the presence of several subgra…
我们证明了除Petersen图外的所有在$n$顶点上的无桥三次图$G$都有一个2-因子，且至多有$2(n-2)/15$长度为$5$的回路.一个无限族的图达到这个界限。我们还表明，$G$有一个2-因子，最多$n/5.8\overline{3}$奇电路。这改进了先前已知的$n/5.41$的界限[Lukoka，Máčajová，Mazák，Škoviera：Small snarks with large oddness，arXiv：1212.3641 [cs.DM] ]。
If $G$ and $H$ are two cubic graphs, then an $H$-coloring of $G$ is a proper edge-coloring $f$ with edges of $H$, such that for each vertex $x$ of $G$, there is a vertex $y$ of $H$ with $f(\partial_G(x))=\partial_H(y)$. If $G$ admits an $H$-coloring, then we will write $H\prec G$. The Petersen coloring conjecture of Jaeger ($P_{10}$-conjecture) states that for any bridgeless cubic graph $G$, one has: $P_{10}\prec G$. The Sylvester coloring conjecture ($S_{10}$-conjecture) states that for any cubic graph $G$, $S_{10}\prec G$. In this paper, we introduce two new conjectures that are related to t…
A fullerene graph is a cubic bridgeless plane graph with only pentagonal and hexagonal faces. We exhibit an infinite family of fullerene graphs of diameter $\sqrt{4n/3}$, where $n$ is the number of vertices. This disproves a conjecture of Andova and Škrekovski [MATCH Commun. Math. Comput. Chem. 70 (2013) 205-220], who conjectured that every fullerene graph on $n$ vertices has diameter at least $\lfloor \sqrt{5n/3}\rfloor-1$.
We introduce weak oddness $ω_{\textrm w}$, a new measure of uncolourability of cubic graphs, defined as the least number of odd components in an even factor. For every bridgeless cubic graph $G$, $ρ(G)\leω_{\textrm w}(G)\leω(G)$, where $ρ(G)$ denotes the resistance of $G$ and $ω(G)$ denotes the oddness of $G$, so this new measure is an approximation of both oddness and resistance. We demonstrate that there are graphs $G$ satisfying $ρ(G) < ω_{\textrm w}(G) < ω(G)$, and that the difference between any two of those three measures can be arbitrarily large. The construction implies that if we repl…
A conjecture of Berge suggests that every bridgeless cubic graph can have its edges covered with at most five perfect matchings. Since three perfect matchings suffice only when the graph in question is $3$-edge-colourable, the rest of cubic graphs falls into two classes: those that can be covered with four perfect matchings, and those that need at least five. Cubic graphs that require more than four perfect matchings to cover their edges are particularly interesting as potential counterexamples to several profound and long-standing conjectures including the celebrated cycle double cover conjec…
A $k$-weak bisection of a cubic graph $G$ is a partition of the vertex-set of $G$ into two parts $V_1$ and $V_2$ of equal size, such that each connected component of the subgraph of $G$ induced by $V_i$ ($i=1,2$) is a tree of at most $k-2$ vertices. This notion can be viewed as a relaxed version of nowhere-zero flows, as it directly follows from old results of Jaeger that every cubic graph $G$ with a circular nowhere-zero $r$-flow has a $\lfloor r \rfloor$-weak bisection. In this paper we study problems related to the existence of $k$-weak bisections. We believe that every cubic graph which ha…
If $f:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ is a function, then let us say that $f$ is sublinear if \[\lim_{n\rightarrow +\infty}\frac{f(n)}{n}=0.\] If $G=(V,E)$ is a cubic graph and $c:E\rightarrow \{1,...,k\}$ is a proper $k$-edge-coloring of $G$, then an edge $e=uv$ of $G$ is poor (rich) in $c$, if the edges incident to $u$ and $v$ are colored with three (five) colors. An edge is abnormal if it is neither rich nor poor. The Petersen coloring conjecture of Jaeger states that any bridgeless cubic graph admits a proper 5-edge-coloring $c$, such that there is no an abnormal edge of $G$ with respect…
