Consider an undirected graph $G = (VG, EG)$ and a set of six \emph{terminals} $T = \set{s_1, s_2, s_3, t_1, t_2, t_3} \subseteq VG$. The goal is to find a collection $\calP$ of three edge-disjoint paths $P_1$, $P_2$, and $P_3$, where $P_i$ connects nodes $s_i$ and $t_i$ ($i = 1, 2, 3$). Results obtained by Robertson and Seymour by graph minor techniques imply a polynomial time solvability of this problem. The time bound of their algorithm is $O(m^3)$ (hereinafter we assume $n := \abs{VG}$, $m := \abs{EG}$, $n = O(m)$). In this paper we consider a special, \emph{Eulerian} case of $G$ and $T$. Namely, construct the \emph{demand graph} $H = (VG, \set{s_1t_1, s_2t_2, s_3t_3})$. The edges of $H$ correspond to the desired paths in $\calP$. In the Eulerian case the degrees of all nodes in the (multi-) graph $G + H$ ($ = (VG, EG \cup EH)$) are even. Schrijver showed that, under the assumption of Eulerianess, cut conditions provide a criterion for the existence of $\calP$. This, in particular, implies that checking for existence of $\calP$ can be done in $O(m)$ time. Our result is a combinatorial $O(m)$-time algorithm that constructs $\calP$ (if the latter exists).
We prove that every Eulerian orientation of $K_{m,n}$ contains $\frac{1}{4+\sqrt{8}}mn(1-o(1))$ arc-disjoint directed 4-cycles, improving earlier lower bounds. Combined with a probabilistic argument, this result is used to prove that every regular tournament with $n$ vertices contains $\frac{1}{8+\sqrt{32}}n^2(1-o(1))$ arc-disjoint directed 4-cycles. The result is also used to provide an upper bound for the distance between two antipodal vertices in interchange graphs.
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…
A digraph $G$ \emph{immerses} a digraph $H$ if there is an injection $f : V(H) \to V(G)$ and a collection of pairwise edge-disjoint directed paths $P_{uv}$, for $uv \in E(H)$, such that $P_{uv}$ starts at $u$ and ends at $v$. We prove that every Eulerian digraph with minimum out-degree $t$ immerses a complete digraph on $Ω(t)$ vertices, thus answering a question of DeVos, Mcdonald, Mohar, and Scheide.
Long Paths and Cycles in eulerian digraphs have gotten a lot of attention recently. In this short note, we show how to use methods from Knierim, Larcher, Martinsson, Noever (2021) to find paths of length $d/(\log d+1)$ in Eulerian digraphs with average degree $d$, improving the recent result of $Ω(d^{1/2+1/40})$. Our result is optimal up to at most a logarithmic factor.
We prove that an eulerian graph $G$ admits a decomposition into $k$ closed trails of odd length if and only if and it contains at least $k$ pairwise edge-disjoint odd circuits and $k\equiv |E(G)|\pmod{2}$. We conjecture that a connected $2d$-regular graph of odd order with $d\ge 1$ admits a decomposition into $d$ odd closed trails sharing a common vertex and verify the conjecture for $d\le 3$. The case $d=3$ is crucial for determining the flow number of a signed eulerian graph which is treated in a separate paper (arXiv:1408.1703v2). The proof of our conjecture for $d=3$ is surprisingly diffic…
An old conjecture of Bollobás and Scott asserts that every Eulerian directed graph with average degree $d$ contains a directed cycle of length at least $Ω(d)$. The best known lower bound for this problem is $Ω(d^{1/2})$ by Huang, Ma, Shapira, Sudakov and Yuster. They asked whether this estimate can be improved at least for directed paths instead of cycles and whether one can find a long path starting from any vertex if the host digraph is connected. In this paper we break the $\sqrt{d}$ barrier, showing how to find a path of length $Ω(d^{1/2+1/40})$ from any vertex of a connected Eulerian digr…
It was independently conjectured by Häggkvist in 1989 and Kriesell in 2011 that given a positive integer $\ell$, every simple eulerian graph with high minimum degree (depending on $\ell$) admits an eulerian tour such that every segment of length at most $\ell$ of the tour is a path. Bensmail, Harutyunyan, Le and Thomassé recently verified the conjecture for 4-edge-connected eulerian graphs. Building on that proof, we prove here the full statement of the conjecture. This implies a variant of the path case of Barát-Thomassen conjecture that any simple eulerian graph with high minimum degree can …
A subcycle of an Eulerian circuit is a sequence of edges that are consecutive in the circuit and form a cycle. We characterise the quartic planar graphs that admit Eulerian circuits avoiding 3-cycles and 4-cycles. From this, it follows that a quartic planar graph of order $n$ can be decomposed into $k_1+k_2+k_3+k_4$ many paths with $k_i$ copies of $P_{i+1}$, the path with $i$ edges, if and only if $k_1+2k_2+3k_3+4k_4 = 2n$. In particular, every connected quartic planar graph of even order admits a $P_5$-decomposition.
Hajós' conjecture states that an Eulerian graph of order n can be decomposed into at most (n-1)/2 edge-disjoint cycles. We describe preprocessing steps, heuristics and integer programming techniques that enable us to verify Hajós' conjecture for all Eulerian graphs with up to twelve nodes.
introduce {\sc Planar Disjoint Paths Completion}, a completion counterpart of the Disjoint Paths problem, and study its parameterized complexity. The problem can be stated as follows: given a, not necessarily connected, plane graph $G,$ $k$ pairs of terminals, and a face $F$ of $G,$ find a minimum-size set of edges, if one exists, to be added inside $F$ so that the embedding remains planar and the pairs become connected by $k$ disjoint paths in the augmented network. Our results are twofold: first, we give an upper bound on the number of necessary additional edges when a solution exists. This …
We investigate the computational complexity of finding temporally disjoint paths or walks in temporal graphs. There, the edge set changes over discrete time steps and a temporal path (resp. walk) uses edges that appear at monotonically increasing time steps. Two paths (or walks) are temporally disjoint if they never use the same vertex at the same time; otherwise, they interfere. This reflects applications in robotics, traffic routing, or finding safe pathways in dynamically changing networks. On the one extreme, we show that on general graphs the problem is computationally hard. The "walk ver…
We study the following general disjoint paths problem: given a supply graph $G$, a set $T\subseteq V(G)$ of terminals, a demand graph $H$ on the vertices $T$, and an integer $k$, the task is to find a set of $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint valid paths, where we say that a path of the supply graph $G$ is valid if its endpoints are in $T$ and adjacent in the demand graph $H$. For a class $\mathcal{H}$ of graphs, we denote by $\mathcal{H}$-Maximum Disjoint Paths the restriction of this problem when the demand graph $H$ is assumed to be a member of $\mathcal{H}$. We study the fixed-parameter tractabi…
Let $G$ be a directed planar graph of complexity $n$, each arc having a nonnegative length. Let $s$ and $t$ be two distinct faces of $G$; let $s_1,...,s_k$ be vertices incident with $s$; let $t_1,...,t_k$ be vertices incident with $t$. We give an algorithm to compute $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint paths connecting the pairs $(s_i,t_i)$ in $G$, with minimal total length, in $O(kn\log n)$ time.
The disjoint paths problem is a fundamental problem in algorithmic graph theory and combinatorial optimization. For a given graph $G$ and a set of $k$ pairs of terminals in $G$, it asks for the existence of $k$ vertex-disjoint paths connecting each pair of terminals. The proof of Robertson and Seymour [JCTB 1995] of the existence of an $n^3$ algorithm for any fixed $k$ is one of the highlights of their Graph Minors project. In this paper, we focus on the version of the problem where all the paths are required to be shortest paths. This problem, called the disjoint shortest paths problem, was i…
In this paper, we consider a transformation of $k$ disjoint paths in a graph. For a graph and a pair of $k$ disjoint paths $\mathcal{P}$ and $\mathcal{Q}$ connecting the same set of terminal pairs, we aim to determine whether $\mathcal{P}$ can be transformed to $\mathcal{Q}$ by repeatedly replacing one path with another path so that the intermediates are also $k$ disjoint paths. The problem is called Disjoint Paths Reconfiguration. We first show that Disjoint Paths Reconfiguration is PSPACE-complete even when $k=2$. On the other hand, we prove that, when the graph is embedded on a plane and al…
Hajós conjectured in 1968 that every Eulerian \(n\)-vertex graph can be decomposed into at most $\lfloor (n-1)/2\rfloor$ edge-disjoint cycles. This has been confirmed for some special graph classes, but the general case remains open. In a sequence of papers by Bienia and Meyniel (1986), Dean (1986), and Bollobás and Scott (1996) it was analogously conjectured that every \emph{directed} Eulerian graph can be decomposed into $O(n)$ cycles. In this paper, we show that every directed Eulerian graph can be decomposed into $O(n \log Δ)$ disjoint cycles, thus making progress towards the conjecture by…
Lovász and Cherkassky discovered in the 1970s independently that if $ G $ is a finite graph with a given set $ T $ of terminal vertices such that $ G $ is inner Eulerian, then the maximal number of edge-disjoint paths connecting distinct vertices in $ T $ is $ \sum_{t\in T}λ(t, T-t) $ where $λ$ is the local edge-connectivity function. The optimality of a system of edge-disjoint $ T $-paths in the Lovász-Cherkassky theorem is witnessed by the existence of certain cuts by Menger's theorem. The infinite generalisation of Menger's theorem by Aharoni and Berger (earlier known as the Erdős-Menger Co…
Given an undirected $n$-vertex graph and $k$ pairs of terminal vertices $(s_1,t_1), \ldots, (s_k,t_k)$, the $k$-Disjoint Shortest Paths ($k$-DSP)-problem asks whether there are $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint paths $P_1,\ldots, P_k$ such that $P_i$ is a shortest $s_i$-$t_i$-path for each $i \in [k]$. Recently, Lochet [SODA 2021] provided an algorithm that solves $k$-DSP in $n^{O(k^{5^k})}$ time, answering a 20-year old question about the computational complexity of $k$-DSP for constant $k$. On the one hand, we present an improved $n^{O(k!k)}$-time algorithm based on a novel geometric view on this…
Given a graph G and k pairs of vertices (s_1,t_1), ..., (s_k,t_k), the k-Vertex-Disjoint Paths problem asks for pairwise vertex-disjoint paths P_1, ..., P_k such that P_i goes from s_i to t_i. Schrijver [SICOMP'94] proved that the k-Vertex-Disjoint Paths problem on planar directed graphs can be solved in time n^{O(k)}. We give an algorithm with running time 2^{2^{O(k^2)}} n^{O(1)} for the problem, that is, we show the fixed-parameter tractability of the problem.
The Disjoint Paths Problem asks, given a graph $G$ and a set of pairs of terminals $(s_{1},t_{1}),\ldots,(s_{k},t_{k})$, whether there is a collection of $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint paths linking $s_{i}$ and $t_{i}$, for $i=1,\ldots,k.$ In their $f(k)\cdot n^{3}$ algorithm for this problem, Robertson and Seymour introduced the irrelevant vertex technique according to which in every instance of treewidth greater than $g(k)$ there is an "irrelevant" vertex whose removal creates an equivalent instance of the problem. This fact is based on the celebrated Unique Linkage Theorem, whose - very techn…
The well-known Disjoint Paths problem is to decide if a graph contains k pairwise disjoint paths, each connecting a different terminal pair from a set of k distinct pairs. We determine, with an exception of two cases, the complexity of the Disjoint Paths problem for $H$-free graphs. If $k$ is fixed, we obtain the $k$-Disjoint Paths problem, which is known to be polynomial-time solvable on the class of all graphs for every $k \geq 1$. The latter does no longer hold if we need to connect vertices from terminal sets instead of terminal pairs. We completely classify the complexity of $k$-Disjoint …
Björklund and Husfeldt developed a randomized polynomial time algorithm to solve the shortest two disjoint paths problem. Their algorithm is based on computation of permanents modulo 4 and the isolation lemma. In this paper, we consider the following generalization of the shortest two disjoint paths problem, and develop a similar algebraic algorithm. The shortest perfect $(A+B)$-path packing problem is: given an undirected graph $G$ and two disjoint node subsets $A,B$ with even cardinalities, find a shortest $|A|/2+|B|/2$ disjoint paths whose ends are both in $A$ or both in $B$. Besides its NP…
Not every graph has an Eulerian tour. But every finite, strongly connected graph has a multi-Eulerian tour, which we define as a closed path that uses each directed edge at least once, and uses edges e and f the same number of times whenever tail(e)=tail(f). This definition leads to a simple generalization of the BEST Theorem. We then show that the minimal length of a multi-Eulerian tour is bounded in terms of the Pham index, a measure of 'Eulerianness'.
We devise a constant-factor approximation algorithm for the maximization version of the edge-disjoint paths problem if the supply graph together with the demand edges form a planar graph. By planar duality this is equivalent to packing cuts in a planar graph such that each cut contains exactly one demand edge. We also show that the natural linear programming relaxations have constant integrality gap, yielding an approximate max-multiflow min-multicut theorem.
A path cover of a graph is a set of disjoint paths so that every vertex in the graph is contained in one of the paths. The path cover number $p(G)$ of graph $G$ is the cardinality of a path cover with the minimum number of paths. Reed in 1996 conjectured that a $2$-connected $3$-regular graph has path cover number at most $\lceil n/10\rceil$. In this paper, we confirm this conjecture.
The balanced hypercube $BH_{n}$, proposed by Wu and Huang, is a variation of the hypercube. The paired 1-disjoint path cover of $BH_{n}$ is the Hamiltonian laceability, which was obtained by Xu et al. in [Appl. Math. Comput. 189 (2007) 1393--1401]. The paired 2-disjoint path cover of $BH_{n}$ was obtained by Cheng et al. in [Appl. Math. and Comput. 242 (2014) 127-142]. In this paper, we obtain the paired 3-disjoint path cover of $BH_{n}$ with $n\geq 3$. This result improves the above known results about the paired $k$-disjoint path covers of $BH_{n}$ for $k=1,2$.
Paths $P^1,\ldots,P^k$ in a graph $G=(V,E)$ are mutually induced if any two distinct $P^i$ and $P^j$ have neither common vertices nor adjacent vertices. For a fixed integer $k$, the $k$-Induced Disjoint Paths problem is to decide if a graph $G$ with $k$ pairs of specified vertices $(s_i,t_i)$ contains $k$ mutually induced paths $P^i$ such that each $P^i$ starts from $s_i$ and ends at $t_i$. Whereas the non-induced version is well-known to be polynomial-time solvable for every fixed integer $k$, a classical result from the literature states that even $2$-Induced Disjoint Paths is NP-complete. W…
We construct for all $ k\in \mathbb{N} $ a $ k $-edge-connected digraph $ D $ with $ s,t\in V(D) $ such that there are no edge-disjoint $ s \rightarrow t $ and $t\rightarrow s $ paths. We use in our construction "self-similar" graphs which technique could be useful in other problems as well.
Let f(k) denote the maximum such that every simple undirected graph containing two vertices s,t and k edge-disjoint s-t paths, also contains two vertices u,v and f(k) independent u-v paths. Here, a set of paths is independent if none of them contains an interior vertex of another. We prove that f(k)=k if k<3, and f(k)=3 otherwise.
This paper considers the problem of many-to-many disjoint paths in the hypercube $Q_n$ with $f$ faulty vertices and obtains the following result. For any integer $k$ with $1\leq k\leq n-2$, any two sets $S$ and $T$ of $k$ fault-free vertices in different parts of $Q_n\ (n\geq 3)$, if $f\leq 2n-2k-3$ and each fault-free vertex has at least two fault-free neighbors, then there exist $k$ fully disjoint fault-free paths linking $S$ and $T$ which contain at least $2^n-2f$ vertices. This result improves some known results in a sense.
By Menger's theorem the maximum number of arc-disjoint paths from a vertex s to a vertex t in a directed graph equals the minumum number of arcs needed to disconnect s and t, i.e., the minimum size of an s-t-cut. The max-flow problem in a network with unit capacities is equivalent to the arc-disjoint paths problem. Moreover the max-flow and min-cut problems form a strongly dual pair. We relax the disjointedness requirement on the paths, allowing them to be almost disjoint, meaning they may share up to one arc. The resulting almost disjoint paths problem (ADP) asks for k s-t-paths such that any…
As a variant of the well-known hypercube, the balanced hypercube $BH_n$ was proposed as a novel interconnection network topology for parallel computing. It is known that $BH_n$ is bipartite. Assume that $S=\{s_1,s_2\}$ and $T=\{t_1,t_2\}$ are any two sets of two vertices in different partite sets of $BH_n$ ($n\geq1$). It has been proved that there exist two vertex-disjoint $s_1,t_1$-path and $s_2,t_2$-path of $BH_n$ covering all vertices of it. In this paper, we prove that there always exist two vertex-disjoint $s_1,t_1$-path and $s_2,t_2$-path covering all vertices of $BH_n$ with at most $2n-…
Let $D$ be a digraph. We define the minimum semi-degree of $D$ as $δ^{0}(D) := \min \{δ^{+}(D), δ^{-}(D)\}$. Let $k$ be a positive integer, and let $S = \{s\}$ and $T = \{t_{1}, \dots ,t_{k}\}$ be any two disjoint subsets of $V(D)$. A set of $k$ internally disjoint paths joining source set $S$ and sink set $T$ that cover all vertices $D$ are called a one-to-many $k$-disjoint directed path cover ($k$-DDPC for short) of $D$. A digraph $D$ is semicomplete if for every pair $x,y$ of vertices of it, there is at least one arc between $x$ and $y$. In this paper, we prove that every semicomplete digra…
The balanced hypercube $BH_n$, a variant of the hypercube, was proposed as a desired interconnection network topology. It is known that $BH_n$ is bipartite. Assume that $S=\{s_1,s_2,\cdots,s_{2n-2}\}$ and $T=\{t_1,t_2,\cdots,t_{2n-2}\}$ are any two sets of vertices in different partite sets of $BH_n$ ($n\geq2$). It has been proved that there exists paired 2-disjoint path cover of $BH_n$. In this paper, we prove that there exists unpaired $(2n-2)$-disjoint path cover of $BH_n$ ($n\geq2$) from $S$ to $T$, which improved some known results. The upper bound $2n-2$ of the number of disjoint paths i…
The Turán number of a graph $H$, $ex(n,H)$, is the maximum number of edges in a simple graph of order $n$ which does not contain $H$ as a subgraph. Let $k\cdot P_3$ denote $k$ disjoint copies of a path on $3$ vertices. In this paper, we determine the value $ex(n, k\cdot P_3)$ and characterize all extremal graphs. This extends a result of Bushaw and Kettle [N. Bushaw and N. Kettle, Turán Numbers of multiple and equibipartite forests, Combin. Probab. Comput., 20(2011) 837-853.], which solved the conjecture proposed by Gorgol in [I. Gorgol. Turán numbers for disjoint copies of graphs. {\it Graphs…
We exploit Krattenthaler's bijection between 123-avoiding permutations and Dyck paths to determine the Eulerian distribution over the set $S_n(123)$ of 123-avoiding permutations in $S_n$. In particular, we show that the descents of a permutation correspond to valleys and triple falls of the associated Dyck path. We get the Eulerian numbers of $S_n(123)$ by studying the joint distribution of these two statistics on Dyck paths.
Given $k$ pairs of vertices $(s_i,t_i)$, $1\le i\le k$, of a digraph $G$, how can we test whether there exist $k$ vertex-disjoint directed paths from $s_i$ to $t_i$ for $1\le i\le k$? This is NP-complete in general digraphs, even for $k = 2$, but for $k=2$ there is a polynomial-time algorithm when $G$ is a tournament (or more generally, a semicomplete digraph), due to Bang-Jensen and Thomassen. Here we prove that for all fixed $k$ there is a polynomial-time algorithm to solve the problem when $G$ is semicomplete.
Let $G$ be the Cartesian product of two finite paths, called a grid, and let $T$ be the set of eight distinct vertices of $G$, called terminals. Assume that $T$ is partitioned into four terminal pairs $\{s_i,t_i\}$, $1\leq i\leq 4$, to be linked in $G$ by using edge disjoint paths. To prove that such a linkage always exists we need a sequence of technical lemmas making possible for some terminals to `escape' from a $3\times 3$ corner of $Q\subset G$, called a `quadrant'. Here we state those lemmas, and give a proof for the cases when $Q$ contains at most $4$ terminals.
Let $c\in (0, 1]$ be a real number and let $n$ be a sufficiently large integer. We prove that every $n$-vertex $c n$-regular graph $G$ contains a collection of $\lfloor 1/c \rfloor$ paths whose union covers all but at most $o(n)$ vertices of $G$. The constant $\lfloor 1/c \rfloor$ is best possible when $1/c\notin \mathbb{N}$ and off by $1$ otherwise. Moreover, if in addition $G$ is bipartite, then the number of paths can be reduced to $\lfloor 1/(2c) \rfloor$, which is best possible.
Let $H$ be an $n$-vertex 3-uniform hypergraph such that every pair of vertices is in at least $n/3+o(n)$ edges. We show that $H$ contains two vertex-disjoint tight paths whose union covers the vertex set of $H$. The quantity two here is best possible and the degree condition is asymptotically best possible. This result also has an interpretation as the \emph{deficiency problems}, recently introduced by Nenadov, Sudakov and Wagner: every such $H$ can be made Hamiltonian by adding at most two vertices and all triples intersecting them.
The $k$ disjoint shortest paths problem ($k$-DSPP) on a graph with $k$ source-sink pairs $(s_i, t_i)$ asks for the existence of $k$ pairwise edge- or vertex-disjoint shortest $s_i$-$t_i$-paths. It is known to be NP-complete if $k$ is part of the input. Restricting to $2$-DSPP with strictly positive lengths, it becomes solvable in polynomial time. We extend this result by allowing zero edge lengths and give a polynomial time algorithm based on dynamic programming for $2$-DSPP on undirected graphs with non-negative edge lengths.
For a digraph $D$, let $δ^{0}(D) = \min \{δ^{+}(D), δ^{-}(D)\}$ be the minimum semi-degree of $D$. A set of $k$ vertex-disjoint paths, $\{P_{1}, \dots, P_{k}\}$, joining a disjoint source set $S = \{s_{1}, \dots, s_{k}\}$ and sink set $T = \{t_{1}, \dots, t_{k}\}$ is called an unpaired many-to-many $k$-disjoint directed path cover ($k$-DDPC for short) of $D$, if each $P_{j}$ joins $s_{j}$ and $t_{σ(j)}$ for some permutation $σ$ on $\{1, \dots , k\}$ and $\bigcup^{k}_{j=1} V(P_{j}) = V(D)$. In this paper, we give a new proof for the following result that every digraph $D$ with $δ^{0}(D) \geq \l…
Hajós conjecture asserts that a simple Eulerian graph on n vertices can be decomposed into at most (n - 1)/2 cycles. The conjecture is only proved for graph classes in which every element contains vertices of degree 2 or 4. We develop new techniques to construct cycle decompositions. They work on the common neighbourhood of two degree-6 vertices. With these techniques we find structures that cannot occur in a minimal counterexample to Hajós conjecture and verify the conjecture for Eulerian graphs of pathwidth at most 6. This implies that these graphs satisfy the small cycle double cover conjec…
Let $A$ and $B$ be disjoint sets, of size $2^k$, of vertices of $Q_n$, the $n$-dimensional hypercube. In 1997, Bollobás and Leader proved that there must be $(n-k)2^k$ edge-disjoint paths between such $A$ and $B$. They conjectured that when $A$ is a down-set and $B$ is an up-set, these paths may be chosen to be directed (that is, the vertices in the path form a chain). We use a novel type of compression argument to prove stronger versions of these conjectures, namely that the largest number of edge-disjoint paths between a down-set $A$ and an up-set $B$ is the same as the largest number of dir…
In 2003, it was claimed that the following problem was solvable in polynomial time: do there exist k edge-disjoint paths of length exactly 3 between vertices s and t in a given graph? The proof was flawed, and we show that this problem is NP-hard even if we disallow multiple edges. We use a reduction from Partial Orientation, a problem recently shown by Pálvölgyi to be NP-hard.
Paired 2-disjoint path covers of Bcube under the partitioned edge fault model
College of Computer Science, Nankai University（南开大学计算机学院）；Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Nankai University（南开大学前沿交叉科学研究院）；Institute of Information and Decision Sciences, National Taipei University of Business（台北商业大学信息与决策科学研究所）
We characterize the class of infinite connected graphs $ G $ for which there exists a $ T $-join for any choice of an infinite $ T \subseteq V(G) $. We also show that the following well-known fact remains true in the infinite case. If $ G $ is connected and does not contain a $ T $-join, then it will if we either remove an arbitrary vertex from $ T $ or add any new vertex to $ T $.
Let $Q$ be a finite subgraph of the integer grid $G$ in the plane, and let $T$ be a set of pairs of distinct vertices in $G$, called `terminal pairs'. Escaping a subset $X\subset T\cap Q$ from $Q$ means finding edge disjoint paths from the terminals in $X$ into distinct vertices of a set $L$ in the boundary of $Q$. Here we prove several lemmas for the cases where $Q$ is a $3\times 3$ grid, $L$ is the union of a vertical and horizontal boundary line of $Q$, furthermore, $T$ is a set of four terminal pairs in $G$ such that $|T\cap Q|\geq 5$. These lemmas are applied in [4] and complete the proof…
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.
