We study universal cycles of the set ${\cal P}(n,k)$ of $k$-partitions of the set $[n]:=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ and prove that the transition digraph associated with ${\cal P}(n,k)$ is Eulerian. But this does not imply that universal cycles (or ucycles) exist, since vertices represent equivalence classes of partitions! We use this result to prove, however, that ucycles of ${\cal P}(n,k)$ exist for all $n \geq 3$ when $k=2$. We reprove that they exist for odd $n$ when $k = n-1$ and that they do not exist for even $n$ when $k = n-1$. An infinite family of $(n,k)$ for which ucycles do not exist is shown to be those pairs for which $S(n-2, k-2)$ is odd ($3 \leq k < n-1$). We also show that there exist universal cycles of partitions of $[n]$ into $k$ subsets of distinct sizes when $k$ is sufficiently smaller than $n$, and therefore that there exist universal packings of the partitions in ${\cal P}(n,k)$. An analogous result for coverings completes the investigation.
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…
A graph $G$ is $(I,F)$-partitionable if its vertex set can be partitioned into two parts such that one part is an independent set, and the other induces a forest. In this paper, we prove that every planar graph without cycles of length $4, 6, 9$ is $(I,F)$-partitionable.
The notion of noncrossing linked partition arose from the study of certain transforms in free probability theory. It is known that the number of noncrossing linked partitions of [n+1] is equal to the n-th large Schroder number $r_n$, which counts the number of Schroder paths. In this paper we give a bijective proof of this result. Then we introduce the structures of linked partitions and linked cycles. We present various combinatorial properties of noncrossing linked partitions, linked partitions, and linked cycles, and connect them to other combinatorial structures and results, including incr…
Nash-Williams proved that for an undirected graph $ G $ the set $ E(G) $ can be partitioned into cycles if and only if every cut has either even or infinite number of edges. Later C. Thomassen gave a simpler proof for this and conjectured the following directed analogue of the theorem: the edge set of a digraph can be partitioned into directed cycles if and only if for each subset of the vertices the cardinality of the ingoing and the outgoing edges are equal. The aim of the paper is to prove this conjecture.
We show that for every η > 0 there exists an integer n_0 such that every 2-colouring of the 3-uniform complete hypergraph on n \geq n_0 vertices contains two disjoint monochromatic tight cycles of distinct colours that together cover all but at most ηn vertices. The same result holds if we replace tight cycles with loose cycles.
An edge colouring of a graph is said to be an $r$-local colouring if the edges incident to any vertex are coloured with at most $r$ colours. Generalising a result of Bessy and Thomassé, we prove that the vertex set of any $2$-locally coloured complete graph may be partitioned into two disjoint monochromatic cycles of different colours. Moreover, for any natural number $r$, we show that the vertex set of any $r$-locally coloured complete graph may be partitioned into $O(r^2 \log r)$ disjoint monochromatic cycles. This generalises a result of Erdős, Gyárfás and Pyber.
Balogh, Barát, Gerbner, Gyárfás, and Sárközy proposed the following conjecture. Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree at least $3n/4$. Then for every $2$-edge-colouring of $G$, the vertex set $V(G)$ may be partitioned into two vertex-disjoint cycles, one of each colour. We prove that this conjecture holds for $n$ large enough, improving approximate results by the aforementioned authors and by DeBiasio and Nelsen.
Magnant and Martin conjectured that the vertex set of any $d$-regular graph $G$ on $n$ vertices can be partitioned into $n / (d+1)$ paths (there exists a simple construction showing that this bound would be best possible). We prove this conjecture when $d = Ω(n)$, improving a result of Han, who showed that in this range almost all vertices of $G$ can be covered by $n / (d+1) + 1$ vertex-disjoint paths. In fact, our proof gives a partition of $V(G)$ into cycles. We also show that, if $d = Ω(n)$ and $G$ is bipartite, then $V(G)$ can be partitioned into $n / (2d)$ paths (this bound in tight for b…
Erdős, Gyárfás and Pyber showed that every $r$-edge-coloured complete graph $K_n$ can be covered by $25 r^2 \log r$ vertex-disjoint monochromatic cycles (independent of $n$). Here, we extend their result to the setting of binomial random graphs. That is, we show that if $p = p(n) = Ω(n^{-1/(2r)})$, then with high probability any $r$-edge-coloured $G(n,p)$ can be covered by at most $1000 r^4 \log r $ vertex-disjoint monochromatic cycles. This answers a question of Korándi, Mousset, Nenadov, Škorić and Sudakov.
Let $D=(V,A)$ be a directed graph of order $n\geq 6$. Let $W$ be a subset of $V$ with $|W|\geq 6$. Suppose that every vertex of $W$ has degree at least $(3n-3)/2$ in $D$. Then for any integer partition $|W|=n_1+n_2$ with $n_1\geq 3$ and $n_2\geq 3$, $D$ contains two disjoint directed cycles $C_1$ and $C_2$ such that $|V(C_1)\cap W|=n_1$ and $|V(C_2)\cap W|=n_2$. We conjecture that for any integer partition $|W|=n_1+n_2+\cdots +n_k$ with $k\geq 3$ and $n_i\geq 3(1\leq i\leq k)$, $D$ contains $k$ disjoint directed cycles $C_1,C_2,\ldots , C_k$ such that $|V(C_i)\cap W|=n_i$ for all $1\leq i\leq …
A connected digraph in which the in-degree of any vertex equals its out-degree is Eulerian, this baseline result is used as the basis of existence proofs for universal cycles (also known as generalized deBruijn cycles or U-cycles) of several combinatorial objects. We extend the body of known results by presenting new results on the existence of universal cycles of monotone, "augmented onto", and Lipschitz functions in addition to universal cycles of certain types of lattice paths and random walks.
We discuss results dealing with universal cycles (u-cycles) and $s$-overlap cycles, and contribute to the body of those results by proving existence of universal cycles of naturally labeled posets (NL posets), $s$-overlap cycles of words of weight $k$, and juggling patterns. The result on posets is, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of the existence of a u-cycle whose length is unknown.
Universal cycle for $k$-permutations is a cyclic arrangement in which each $k$-permutation appears exactly once as $k$ consecutive elements. Enumeration problem of universal cycles for $k$-permutations is discussed and one new enumerating method is proposed in this paper. Accurate enumerating formulae are provided when $k=2,3$.
We present a family of partitions of $W_\mathcal{G}$, the set of walks on a directed graph $\mathcal{G}$. Each partition in this family is identified by an integer sequence $K$, which specifies a collection of cycles on $\mathcal{G}$ with a certain well-defined structure. We term such cycles resummable, and a walk that does not traverse any such cycles $K$-irreducible. For a given value of $K$, the corresponding partition of $W_\mathcal{G}$ consists of a collection of cells that each contain a single $K$-irreducible walk $i$ plus all walks that can be formed from $i$ by attaching one or more r…
A universal cycle for permutations of length $n$ is a cyclic word or permutation, any factor of which is order-isomorphic to exactly one permutation of length $n$, and containing all permutations of length $n$ as factors. It is well known that universal cycles for permutations of length $n$ exist. However, all known ways to construct such cycles are rather complicated. For example, in the original paper establishing the existence of the universal cycles, constructing such a cycle involves finding an Eulerian cycle in a certain graph and then dealing with partially ordered sets. In this paper, …
In this paper, we introduce a method of constructing Universal Cycles on sets by taking "sums" and "products" of smaller cycles. We demonstrate this new approach by proving that if there exist Universal Cycles on the 4-subsets of [18] and the 4-subsets of [26], then for any integer n which is greater than or equal 18 and equivalent to 2 mod 8, there exists a Universal Cycle on the 4-subsets of [n].
A universal cycle for permutations is a word of length n! such that each of the n! possible relative orders of n distinct integers occurs as a cyclic interval of the word. We show how to construct such a universal cycle in which only n+1 distinct integers are used. This is best possible and proves a conjecture of Chung, Diaconis and Graham.
A universal cycle is a compact listing of a class of combinatorial objects. In this paper, we prove the existence of universal cycles of classes of labeled graphs, including simple graphs, trees, graphs with m edges, graphs with loops, graphs with multiple edges (with up to m duplications of each edge), directed graphs, hypergraphs, and k-uniform hypergraphs.
It is well known that Universal Cycles of $k$-letter words on an $n$-letter alphabet exist for all $k$ and $n$. In this paper, we prove that Universal Cycles exist for restricted classes of words, including: non-bijections, equitable words (under suitable restrictions), ranked permutations, and "passwords".
A connected digraph in which the in-degree of any vertex equals its out-degree is Eulerian; this baseline result is used as the basis of existence proofs for universal cycles (also known as deBruijn cycles or $U$-cycles) of several combinatorial objects. We present new results on the existence of universal cycles of certain classes of functions. These include onto functions, and 1-inequitable sequences on a binary alphabet. In each case the connectedness of the underlying graph is the non-trivial aspect to be established.
In 1982 Thomassen asked whether there exists an integer f(k,t) such that every strongly f(k,t)-connected tournament T admits a partition of its vertex set into t vertex classes V_1,...,V_t such that for all i the subtournament T[V_i] induced on T by V_i is strongly k-connected. Our main result implies an affirmative answer to this question. In particular we show that f(k,t) = O(k^7 t^4) suffices. As another application of our main result we give an affirmative answer to a question of Song as to whether, for any integer t, there exists an integer h(t) such that every strongly h(t)-connected tou…
Let $\textbf{T}(n,k)$ be the set of strings of length $n$ over the alphabet $Σ=\{1,2,\ldots,k\}$. A universal cycle for $\textbf{T}(n,k)$ can be constructed using a greedy algorithm: start with the string $k^n$, and continually append the least symbol possible without repeating a substring of length $n$. This construction also creates universal cycles for some subsets $\textbf{S}\subseteq\textbf{T}(n,k)$; we will classify all such subsets that are closed under rotations.
Twin-star hypothesis and cycle-free $d$-partitions of $K_{2d}$
Bowling Green State University(鲍灵格林州立大学);Geneva College(日内瓦学院);Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy(罗马尼亚科学院数学研究所);Columbus State University(哥伦布州立大学)
A universal cycle, or u-cycle, for a given set of words is a circular word that contains each word from the set exactly once as a contiguous subword. The celebrated de Bruijn sequences are a particular case of such a u-cycle, where a set in question is the set $A^n$ of all words of length $n$ over a $k$-letter alphabet $A$. A universal word, or u-word, is a linear, i.e. non-circular, version of the notion of a u-cycle, and it is defined similarly. Removing some words in $A^n$ may, or may not, result in a set of words for which u-cycle, or u-word, exists. The goal of this paper is to study the …
A cycle of length $t$ in a hypergraph is an alternating sequence $v_1,e_1,v_2\dots,v_t,e_t$ of distinct vertices $v_i$ and distinct edges $e_i$ so that $\{v_i,v_{i+1}\}\subseteq e_i$ (with $v_{t+1}:=v_1$). Let $λK_n^h$ be the $λ$-fold $n$-vertex complete $h$-graph. Let $\mathcal G=(V,E)$ be a hypergraph all of whose edges are of size at least $h$, and $2\leq c_1\leq \dots\leq c_k\leq |V|$. In order to partition the edge set of $\mathcal G$ into cycles of specified lengths $c_1, \dots, c_k$, an obvious necessary condition is that $\sum_{i=1}^k c_i=|E|$. We show that this condition is sufficient…
Universal Cycles, or U-cycles, as originally defined by de Bruijn, are an efficient method to exhibit a large class of combinatorial objects in a compressed fashion, and with no repeats. de Bruijn's theorem states that U-cycles for $n$ letter words on a $k$ letter alphabet exist for all $k$ and $n$. Much has already been proved about Universal Cycles for a variety of other objects. This work is intended to augment the current research in the area by exhibiting U-cycles for {\it complementary classes}. Results will be presented that exhibit the existence of U-cycles for class-alternating words …
We present sufficient conditions for when an ordering of universal cycles $α_1, α_2, \ldots, α_m$ for disjoint sets $\mathbf{S}_1, \mathbf{S}_2, \ldots , \mathbf{S}_m$ can be concatenated together to obtain a universal cycle for $\mathbf{S} = \mathbf{S}_1 \cup \mathbf{S}_2 \cup \cdots \cup \mathbf{S}_m$. When $\mathbf{S}$ is the set of all $k$-ary strings of length $n$, the result of such a successful construction is a de Bruijn sequence. Our conditions are applied to generalize two previously known de Bruijn sequence constructions and then they are applied to develop three new de Bruijn seque…
We study the structure of red-blue edge colorings of complete graphs, with no copies of the $n$-cycle $C_n$ in red, and no copies of the $n$-wheel $W_n = C_n \ast K_1$ in blue, for an odd integer $n$. Our first main result is that in any such coloring, deleting at most two vertices we obtain a vertex-partition of $G$ into three sets such that the edges inside the partition classes are red, and edges between partition classes are blue. As a second result, we obtain bounds for the Ramsey numbers of $r(C_{2k+1},W_{2j})$ for $k < j$ integers, which asymptotically confirm the values of $4j+1$, as i…
Lehel conjectured that in every $2$-coloring of the edges of $K_n$, there is a vertex disjoint red and blue cycle which span $V(K_n)$. Łuczak, Rödl, and Szemerédi proved Lehel's conjecture for large $n$, Allen gave a different proof for large $n$, and finally Bessy and Thomassé gave a proof for all $n$. Balogh, Barát, Gerbner, Gyárfás, and Sárközy proposed a significant strengthening of Lehel's conjecture where $K_n$ is replaced by any graph $G$ with $δ(G)> 3n/4$; if true, this minimum degree condition is essentially best possible. We prove that their conjecture holds when $δ(G)>(3/4+o(1))n$. …
Consider the collection of all t-multisets of {1,...,n}. A universal cycle on multisets is a string of numbers, each of which is between 1 and n, such that if these numbers are considered in t-sized windows, every multiset in the collection is present in the string precisely once. The problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions on n and t for the existence of universal cycles and similar combinatorial structures was first addressed by DeBruijn in 1946 (who considered t-tuples instead of t-multisets). The past 15 years has seen a resurgence of interest in this area, primarily due to …
A universal cycle (u-cycle) is a compact listing of a collection of combinatorial objects. In this paper, we use natural encodings of these objects to show the existence of u-cycles for collections of subsets, matroids, restricted multisets, chains of subsets, multichains, and lattice paths. For subsets, we show that a u-cycle exists for the $k$-subsets of an $n$-set if we let $k$ vary in a non zero length interval. We use this result to construct a "covering" of length $(1+o(1))$$n \choose k$ for all subsets of $[n]$ of size exactly $k$ with a specific formula for the $o(1)$ term. We also sho…
We give a new proof of the Skeletal Lemma, which is the main technical tool in our paper on Hamilton cycles in line graphs [T. Kaiser and P. Vrána, Hamilton cycles in 5-connected line graphs, European J. Combin. 33 (2012), 924-947]. It generalises results on disjoint spanning trees in graphs to the context of 3-hypergraphs. The lemma is proved in a slightly stronger version that is more suitable for applications. The proof is simplified and formulated in a more accessible way.
Superlinear Lower Bounds for Monochromatic Path Partitions
School of Mathematics, Shandong University(山东大学数学学院);Extremal Combinatorics and Probability Group (ECOPRO), Institute for Basic Science (IBS)(基础科学研究院极值组合与概率研究组);School of Mathematics, Nanjing University(南京大学数学系)
Let $G$ be a connected graph with vertex set $V(G)$ and edge set $E(G)$. For an ordered $k$-partition $Π=\{Q_1,\ldots,Q_k\}$ of $V(G)$, the representation of a vertex $v \in V(G)$ with respect to $Π$ is the $k$-vectors $r(v|Π)=(d(v,Q_1),\ldots,d(v,Q_k))$, where $d(v,Q_i)$ is the distance between $v$ and $Q_i$. The partition $Π$ is a resolving partition if $r(u|Π)\neq r(v|Π)$, for each pair of distinct vertices $u,v \in V(G)$. The minimum $k$ for which there is a resolving $k$-partition of $V(G)$ is the partition dimension of $G$. A vertex $w\in V(G)$ strongly resolves two distinct vertices $u,…
Let S be a cyclic n-ary sequence. We say that S is a {\it universal cycle} ((n,k)-Ucycle) for k-subsets of [n] if every such subset appears exactly once contiguously in S, and is a Ucycle packing if every such subset appears at most once. Few examples of Ucycles are known to exist, so the relaxation to packings merits investigation. A family {S_n} of (n,k)-Ucycle packings for fixed k is a near-Ucycle if the length of S_n is $(1-o(1))\binom{n}{k}$. In this paper we prove that near-(n,k)-Ucycles exist for all k.
We define and study a special type of hypergraph. A $σ$-hypergraph $H= H(n,r,q$ $\mid$ $σ$), where $σ$ is a partition of $r$, is an $r$-uniform hypergraph having $nq$ vertices partitioned into $ n$ classes of $q$ vertices each. If the classes are denoted by $V_1$, $V_2$,...,$V_n$, then a subset $K$ of $V(H)$ of size $r$ is an edge if the partition of $r$ formed by the non-zero cardinalities $ \mid$ $K$ $\cap$ $V_i \mid$, $ 1 \leq i \leq n$, is $σ$. The non-empty intersections $K$ $\cap$ $V_i$ are called the parts of $K$, and $s(σ)$ denotes the number of parts. We consider various types of cycl…
A connected digraph in which the in-degree of any vertex equals its out-degree is Eulerian; this baseline result is used as the basis of existence proofs for universal cycles (also known as ucycles or generalized deBruijn cycles or U-cycles) of several combinatorial objects. The existence of ucycles is often dependent on the specific representation that we use for the combinatorial objects. For example, should we represent the subset $\{2,5\}$ of $\{1,2,3,4,5\}$ as "25" in a linear string? Is the representation "52" acceptable? Or it it tactically advantageous (and acceptable) to go with $\{0,…
Given a complete graph with positive weights on its edges, we define the weight of a subset of edges as the product of weights of the edges in the subset and consider sums (partition functions) of weights over subsets of various kinds: cycle covers, closed walks, spanning trees. We show that if the weights of the edges of the graph are within a constant factor, fixed in advance, of each other then the bulk of the partition function is concentrated on the subsets of a particularly simple structure: cycle covers with few cycles, walks that visit every vertex only few times, and spanning trees wi…
Universal cycles are generalizations of de Bruijn cycles and Gray codes that were introduced originally by Chung, Diaconis, and Graham in 1990. They have been developed by many authors since, for various combinatorial objects such as strings, subsets, permutations, partitions, vector spaces, and designs. One generalization of universal cycles, which require almost complete overlap of consecutive words, is s-overlap cycles, which relax such a constraint. In this paper we study weak orders, which are relations that are transitive and complete. We prove the existence of universal and s-overlap cy…
A graph is near-bipartite if its vertex set can be partitioned into an independent set and a set which induces a forest. In this paper, planar graphs without cycles of length from 4 to 7 are shown to be near-bipartite.
In 2015, Bringmann, Lovejoy and Mahlburg considered certain kinds overpartitions, which can been seen as the overpartition analogue of Schur's partition. The motivation of their work is that the difference between the generating function of Schur's classical partitions and the generating functions of the partitions in which the smallest part is excluded. The difference between the two generating functions of partitions is a specialization of the "universal" mock theta function g_3 which introduced by Hickerson. To give an analogue of this, by using another universal mock theta function g_2 ins…
For graphs $G$ and $H$, let $G\to (H,H)$ signify that any red/blue edge coloring of $G$ contains a monochromatic $H$ as a subgraph, and $\mathcal{H}(Δ,n)=\{H:|V(H)|=n,Δ(H)\le Δ\}$. For fixed $Δ$ and $n$, we say that $G$ is a partition universal graph for $\mathcal{H}(Δ,n)$ if $G\to (H,H)$ for every $H\in\mathcal{H}(Δ,n)$. In 1983, Chvátal, Rödl, Szemerédi and Trotter proved that for any $Δ\ge2$ there exists a constant $B$ such that, for any $n$, if $N\ge Bn$ then $K_N$ is partition universal for $\mathcal{H}(Δ,n)$. Recently, Kohayakawa, Rödl, Schacht and Szemerédi proved that the complete grap…