Let $G$ be a 2-connected graph, $l$ be the length of a longest path in $G$ and $c$ be the circumference - the length of a longest cycle in $G$. In 1952, Dirac proved that $c>\sqrt{2l}$ and conjectured that $c\ge 2\sqrt{l}$. In this paper we present more general sharp bounds in terms of $l$ and the length $m$ of a vine on a longest path in $G$ including Dirac's conjecture as a corollary: if $c=m+y+2$ (generally, $c\ge m+y+2$) for some integer $y\ge 0$, then $c\ge\sqrt{4l+(y+1)^2}$ if $m$ is odd; and $c\ge\sqrt{4l+(y+1)^2-1}$ if $m$ is even.
In 1966, T. Gallai asked whether every connected graph has a vertex that appears in all longest paths. Since then this question has attracted much attention and many work has been done in this topic. One important open question in this area is to ask whether any three longest paths contains a common vertex in a connected graph. It was conjectured that the answer to this question is positive. In this paper, we propose a new approach in view of distances among longest paths in a connected graph, and give a substantial progress towards the conjecture along the idea.
Let $P,Q$ be longest paths in a simple graph. We analyze the possible connections between the components of $P\cup Q\setminus (V(P)\cap V(Q))$ and introduce the notion of a bi-traceable graph. We use the results for all the possible configurations of the intersection points when $\#V(P)\cap V(Q)\le 5$ in order to prove that if the intersection of three longest paths $P,Q,R$ is empty, then $\#(V(P)\cap V(Q))\ge 6$. We also prove Hippchen's conjecture for $k\le 6$: If a graph $G$ is $k$-connected for $k\le 6$, and $P$ and $Q$ are longest paths in $G$, then $\#(V(P)\cap V(Q))\ge 6$.
Carsten Thomassen conjectured that every longest circuit in a 3-connected graph has a chord. We prove the conjecture for graphs having no $K_{3,3}$ minor, and consequently for planar graphs.
Let $G$ be a 2-connected graph of order $n$ and let $c$ be the circumference - the order of a longest cycle in $G$. In this paper we present a sharp lower bound for the circumference based on minimum degree $δ$ and $p$ - the order of a longest path in $G$. This is a common generalization of two earlier classical results for 2-connected graphs due to Dirac: (i) $c\ge \min\{n,2δ\}$; and (ii) $c\ge\sqrt{2p}$. Moreover, the result is stronger than (ii).
Let $π$ be a permutation of $[n]=\{1,\dots,n\}$ and denote by $\ell(π)$ the length of a longest increasing subsequence of $π$. Let $\ell_{n,k}$ be the number of permutations $π$ of $[n]$ with $\ell(π)=k$. Chen conjectured that the sequence $\ell_{n,1},\ell_{n,2},\dots,\ell_{n,n}$ is log concave for every fixed positive integer $n$. We conjecture that the same is true if one is restricted to considering involutions and we show that these two conjectures are closely related. We also prove various analogues of these conjectures concerning permutations whose output tableaux under the Robinson-Sche…
Let $P_{n,k}$ be the number of permutations $π$ on [n]={1, 2,..., n} such that the length of the longest increasing subsequences of $π$ equals k, and let $M_{2n, k}$ be the number of matchings on [2n] with crossing number k. Define $P_n(x)= \sum_k P_{n,k}x^k$ and $M_{2n}(x)=\sum_{k} M_{2n,k}x^k$. We propose some conjectures on the log-concavity and q-log-convexity of the polynomials $P_n(x)$ and $M_{2n}(x)$. We also introduce the notions of $\infty$-q-log-convexity and $\infty$-q-log-concavity, and the notion of higher order log-concavity with respect to $\infty$-q-log-convex or $\infty$-q-log…
Chen proposed a conjecture on the log-concavity of the generating function for the symmetric group with respect to the length of longest increasing subsequences of permutations. Motivated by Chen's log-concavity conjecture, Bóna, Lackner and Sagan further studied similar problems by restricting the whole symmetric group to certain of its subsets. They obtained the log-concavity of the corresponding generating functions for these subsets by using the hook-length formula. In this paper, we generalize and prove their results by establishing the Schur positivity of certain symmetric functions. Thi…
We prove a conjecture of Drew Armstrong on the average maximal length of $k$-alternating subsequence of permutations. The $k=1$ case is a well-known result of Richard Stanley.
In the language of hypergraphs, our main result is a Dirac-type bound: we prove that every $3$-connected hypergraph $H$ with $ δ(H)\geq \max\{|V(H)|, \frac{|E(H)|+10}{4}\}$ has a hamiltonian Berge cycle. This is sharp and refines a conjecture by Jackson from 1981 (in the language of bipartite graphs). Our proofs are in the language of bipartite graphs, since the incidence graph of each hypergraph is bipartite.
Let $G$ be a $k$-connected graph on $n$ vertices. Hippchen's Conjecture states that two longest paths in $G$ share at least $k$ vertices. Gutiérrez recently proved the conjecture when $k\leq 4$ or $k\geq \frac{n-2}{3}$. We improve upon both results; namely, we show that two longest paths in $G$ share at least $k$ vertices when $k=5$ or $k\geq \frac{n+2}{5}$. This completely resolves two conjectures of Gutiérrez in the affirmative.
A Note on Grünbaum's Conjecture about Longest Cycles and Paths
Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University（庆应义塾大学理工学部）；Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University（横滨国立大学环境信息学部）；School of Mathematics and Statistics, Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Analysis & Applications (Ministry of Education), Central China Normal University（华中师范大学数学与统计学院，非线性分析与应用教育部重点实验室）
We show that every pair of longest paths in a $k$-connected graph on $n$ vertices intersect each other in at least $(8k-n+2)/5$ vertices. We also show that, in a 4-connected graph, every pair of longest paths intersect each other in at least four vertices. This confirms a conjecture of Hippchen for $k$-connected graphs when $k\leq 4$ or $k\geq (n-2)/3$.
Recently Richard Stanley initiated a study of the distribution of the length as(w) of the longest alternating subsequence in a random permutation w from the symmetric group $S_n$. Among other things he found an explicit formula for the generating function (on n and k) for the probability that as(w) is at most k and conjectured that the distribution, suitably centered and normalized, tended to a Gaussian with variance 8/45. In this note we present a proof of the conjecture based on the generating function.
The problem of the fluctuation of the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) of two i.i.d. sequences of length $n>0$ has been open for decades. There exist contradicting conjectures on the topic. Chvatal and Sankoff conjectured in 1975 that asymptotically the order should be $n^{2/3}$, while Waterman conjectured in 1994 that asymptotically the order should be $n$. A contiguous substring consisting only of one type of symbol is called a block. In the present work, we determine the order of the fluctuation of the LCS for a special model of sequences consisting of i.i.d. blocks whose lengths are unifor…
We present eighteen exact analogs of six well-known fundamental Theorems (due to Dirac, Nash-Williams and Jung) in hamiltonian graph theory providing alternative compositions of graph invariants. In Theorems 1-3 we give three lower bounds for the length of a longest cycle $C$ of a graph $G$ in terms of minimum degree $δ$, connectivity $κ$ and parameters $\bar{p}$, $\bar{c}$ - the lengths of a longest path and longest cycle in $G\backslash C$, respectively. These bounds have no analogs in the area involving $\bar{p}$ and $\bar{c}$ as parameters. In Theorems 11 and 12 we give two Dirac-type resu…
We consider the length L of the longest common subsequence of two randomly uniformly and independently chosen n character words over a k-ary alphabet. Subadditivity arguments yield that the expected value of L, when normalized by n, converges to a constant C_k. We prove a conjecture of Sankoff and Mainville from the early 80's claiming that C_k\sqrt{k} goes to 2 as k goes to infinity.
We show that every set $\mathcal{P}$ of $n$ non-collinear points in the plane contains a point incident to at least $\lceil\frac{n}{3}\rceil+1$ of the lines determined by $\mathcal{P}$.
We consider the following iterative construction of a random planar triangulation. Start with a triangle embedded in the plane. In each step, choose a bounded face uniformly at random, add a vertex inside that face and join it to the vertices of the face. After n-3 steps, we obtain a random triangulated plane graph with n vertices, which is called a Random Apollonian Network (RAN). We show that asymptotically almost surely (a.a.s.) every path in a RAN has length o(n), refuting a conjecture of Frieze and Tsourakakis. We also show that a RAN always has a path of length (2n-5)^{log 2/log 3}, and …
Two new sufficient conditions for generalized cycles (including Hamilton and dominating cycles as special cases) in an arbitrary k-connected graph (k=1,2,...) are derived, which prove the truth of Bondy's (1980) famous conjecture for some variants significantly improving the result expected by the given hypothesis. Similarly, two new lower bounds for the circumference (the length of a longest cycle) are established for the reverse hypothesis proposed by Jung (2001).
In one of their seminal articles on allowable sequences, Goodman and Pollack gave combinatorial generalizations for three problems in discrete geometry, one of which being the Dirac conjecture. According to this conjecture, any set of $n$ noncollinear points in the plane has a point incident to at least $c n$ connecting lines determined by the set. The notion of allowable sequences of permutations provides a natural combinatorial setting for analyzing these problems. Within this formalism, the conjectured generalization reads as follows: \emph{Any nontrivial allowable $n$-sequence $Σ$ has a lo…
We investigate the asymptotic standard deviation of the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) of two independent i.i.d. sequences of length n. The first sequence is drawn from a three letter alphabet {0,1,a}, whilst the second sequence is binary. The main result of this article is that in this asymmetric case, the standard deviation of the length of the LCS is of order square root of n. This confirms Waterman's conjecture for this special case. Our result seems to indicate that in many other situations the order of the standard deviation is also square root of n.
It has been conjectured by W. Chen that the distribution of the length of the longest increasing subsequence in a uniformly random permutation is log-concave. We propose a stronger version of this conjecture which involves the Kronecker coefficients of the symmetric group.
Motivated by work of Haythorpe, Thomassen and the author showed that there exists a positive constant $c$ such that there is an infinite family of 4-regular 4-connected graphs, each containing exactly $c$ hamiltonian cycles. We complement this by proving that the same conclusion holds for planar 4-regular 3-connected graphs, although it does not hold for planar 4-regular 4-connected graphs by a result of Brinkmann and Van Cleemput, and that it holds for 4-regular graphs of connectivity 2 with the constant $144 < c$, which we believe to be minimal among all hamiltonian 4-regular graphs of suffi…
In 2014, Payne-Wood proved that every non-collinear set $P$ of $n$ points in the Euclidean plane contains a point in at least $\dfrac{n}{37}$ lines determined by $P.$ This is a remarkable answer for the conjecture, which was proposed by Erdős, that every non-collinear set $P$ of $n$ points contains a point in at least $\dfrac{n}{c_1}$ lines determined by $P$, for some constant $c_1.$ In this article, we refine the result of Payne-Wood to give that every non-collinear set $P$ of $n$ points contains a point in at least $\dfrac{n}{26}+2$ lines determined by $P$ . Moreover, we also discuss some re…
The Grundy domination number of a simple graph $G = (V,E)$ is the length of the longest sequence of unique vertices $S = (v_1, \ldots, v_k)$, $v_i \in V$, that satisfies the property $N[v_i] \setminus \cup_{j=1}^{i-1}N[v_j] \neq \emptyset$ for each $i \in [k]$. Here, $N(v) = \{u : uv \in E\}$ and $N[v] = N(v) \cup \{v\}$. In this note, we prove a recent conjecture about the Grundy domination number of the strong product of two graphs. We then discuss how this result relates to the zero forcing number of the strong product of graphs.
We demonstrate an infinite family of pseudoline arrangements, in which an arrangement of n pseudolines has no member incident to more than 4n/9 points of intersection. This shows the "Strong Dirac" conjecture to be false for pseudolines. We also raise a number of open problems relating to possible differences between the structure of incidences between points and lines versus the structure of incidences between points and pseudolines.
For a 2-connected graph $G$ on $n$ vertices and two vertices $x,y\in V(G)$, we prove that there is an $(x,y)$-path of length at least $k$ if there are at least $\frac{n-1}{2}$ vertices in $V(G)\backslash \{x,y\}$ of degree at least $k$. This strengthens a well-known theorem due to Erdős and Gallai in 1959. As the first application of this result, we show that a 2-connected graph with $n$ vertices contains a cycle of length at least $2k$ if it has at least $\frac{n}{2}+k$ vertices of degree at least $k$. This confirms a 1975 conjecture made by Woodall. As another applications, we obtain some re…
In 1951, Gabriel Dirac conjectured that every set P of n non-collinear points in the plane contains a point in at least n/2-c lines determined by P, for some constant c. The following weakening was proved by Beck and Szemerédi-Trotter: every set P of n non-collinear points contains a point in at least n/c lines determined by P, for some large unspecified constant c. We prove that every set P of n non-collinear points contains a point in at least n/37 lines determined by P. We also give the best known constant for Beck's Theorem, proving that every set of n points with at most k collinear deter…
A cyclic coloring of a plane graph $G$ is a coloring of its vertices such that vertices incident with the same face have distinct colors. The minimum number of colors in a cyclic coloring of a plane graph $G$ is its cyclic chromatic number $χ_c(G)$. Let $Δ^*(G)$ be the maximum face degree of a graph $G$. In this note we show that to prove the Cyclic Coloring Conjecture of Borodin from 1984, saying that every connected plane graph $G$ has $χ_c(G) \leq \lfloor \frac{3}{2}Δ^*(G)\rfloor$, it is enough to do it for subdivisions of simple $3$-connected plane graphs. We have discovered four new diffe…
Let $r$ and $d$ be positive integers with $r<d$. Consider a random $d$-ary tree constructed as follows. Start with a single vertex, and in each time-step choose a uniformly random leaf and give it $d$ newly created offspring. Let ${\mathcal T}_t$ be the tree produced after $t$ steps. We show that there exists a fixed $δ<1$ depending on $d$ and $r$ such that almost surely for all large $t$, every $r$-ary subtree of ${\mathcal T}_t$ has less than $t^δ$ vertices. The proof involves analysis that also yields a related result. Consider the following iterative construction of a random planar triangu…
Let C(G) denote the set of lengths of cycles in a graph G. In the first part of this paper, we study the minimum possible value of |C(G)| over all graphs G of average degree d and girth g. Erdos conjectured that |C(G)| =Ω(d^{\lfloor (g-1)/2\rfloor}) for all such graphs, and we prove this conjecture. In particular, the longest cycle in a graph of average degree d and girth g has length Ω(d^{\lfloor (g-1)/2\rfloor}). The study of this problem was initiated by Ore in 1967 and our result improves all previously known lower bounds on the length of the longest cycle. Moreover, our bound cannot be im…
We show that for each α>0 every sufficiently large oriented graph G with δ^+(G),δ^-(G)\ge 3|G|/8+ α|G| contains a Hamilton cycle. This gives an approximate solution to a problem of Thomassen. In fact, we prove the stronger result that G is still Hamiltonian if δ(G)+δ^+(G)+δ^-(G)\geq 3|G|/2 + α|G|. Up to the term α|G| this confirms a conjecture of Häggkvist. We also prove an Ore-type theorem for oriented graphs.
Much of extremal graph theory has concentrated either on finding very small subgraphs of a large graph (Turan-type results) or on finding spanning subgraphs (Dirac-type results). In this paper we are interested in finding intermediate-sized subgraphs. We investigate minimum degree conditions under which a graph G contains squared paths and squared cycles of arbitrary specified lengths. We determine precise thresholds, assuming that the order of G is large. This extends results of Fan and Kierstead [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 63 (1995), 55--64] and of Komlos, Sarkozy, and Szemeredi [Random Struct…
We prove a `resilience' version of Dirac's theorem in the setting of random regular graphs. More precisely, we show that, whenever $d$ is sufficiently large compared to $\varepsilon>0$, a.a.s. the following holds: let $G'$ be any subgraph of the random $n$-vertex $d$-regular graph $G_{n,d}$ with minimum degree at least $(1/2+\varepsilon)d$. Then $G'$ is Hamiltonian. This proves a conjecture of Ben-Shimon, Krivelevich and Sudakov. Our result is best possible: firstly, the condition that $d$ is large cannot be omitted, and secondly, the minimum degree bound cannot be improved.
