We prove that if an $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree at least $3$ contains a Hamiltonian cycle, then it contains another cycle of length $n-o(n)$; this implies, in particular, that a well-known conjecture of Sheehan from 1975 holds asymptotically. Our methods, which combine constructive, poset-based techniques and non-constructive, parity-based arguments, may be of independent interest.
We introduce and study a $d$-dimensional generalization of Hamiltonian cycles in graphs - the Hamiltonian $d$-cycles in $K_n^d$ (the complete simplicial $d$-complex over a vertex set of size $n$). Those are the simple $d$-cycles of a complete rank, or, equivalently, of size $1 + {{n-1} \choose d}$. The discussion is restricted to the fields $F_2$ and $Q$. For $d=2$, we characterize the $n$'s for which Hamiltonian $2$-cycles exist. For $d=3$ it is shown that Hamiltonian $3$-cycles exist for infinitely many $n$'s. In general, it is shown that there always exist simple $d$-cycles of size ${{n-1} …
Let $G$ be a finite group. We show that if $|G| = pqrs$, where $p$, $q$, $r$, and $s$ are distinct odd primes, then every connected Cayley graph on $G$ has a hamiltonian cycle.
We prove that a tournament and its complement contain the same number of oriented Hamiltonian paths (resp. cycles) of any given type, as a generalization of Rosenfeld's result proved for antidirected paths.
Whitney proved in 1931 that every 4-connected planar triangulation is hamiltonian. Later in 1979, Hakimi, Schmeichel and Thomassen conjectured that every such triangulation on $n$ vertices has at least $2(n - 2)(n - 4)$ hamiltonian cycles. Along this direction, Brinkmann, Souffriau and Van Cleemput established a linear lower bound on the number of hamiltonian cycles in 4-connected planar triangulations. In stark contrast, Alahmadi, Aldred and Thomassen showed that every 5-connected triangulation of the plane or the projective plane has exponentially many hamiltonian cycles. This gives the moti…
Whitney proved in 1931 that 4-connected planar triangulations are Hamiltonian. Hakimi, Schmeichel, and Thomassen conjectured in 1979 that if $G$ is a 4-connected planar triangulation with $n$ vertices then $G$ contains at least $2(n-2)(n-4)$ Hamiltonian cycles, with equality if and only if $G$ is a double wheel. On the other hand, a recent result of Alahmadi, Aldred, and Thomassen states that there are exponentially many Hamiltonian cycles in 5-connected planar triangulations. In this paper, we consider 4-connected planar $n$-vertex triangulations $G$ that do not have too many separating 4-cyc…
The Bubble-sort graph $BS_n,\,n\geqslant 2$, is a Cayley graph over the symmetric group $Sym_n$ generated by transpositions from the set $\{(1 2), (2 3),\ldots, (n-1 n)\}$. It is a bipartite graph containing all even cycles of length $\ell$, where $4\leqslant \ell\leqslant n!$. We give an explicit combinatorial characterization of all its $4$- and $6$-cycles. Based on this characterization, we define generalized prisms in $BS_n,\,n\geqslant 5$, and present a new approach to construct a Hamiltonian cycle based on these generalized prisms.
In this series of papers, the primary goal is to enumerate Hamiltonian cycles (HC's) on the grid cylinder graphs $P_{m+1}\times C_n$, where $n$ is allowed to grow whilst $m$ is fixed. In Part~I, we studied the so-called non-contractible HC's. Here, in Part~II, we proceed further on to the contractible case. We propose two different novel characterizations of contractible HC's, from which we construct digraphs for enumerating the contractible HC's. Given the impression which the computational data for $m \leq 9$ convey, we conjecture that the asymptotic domination of the contractible HC's versu…
We prove a new sufficient pair degree condition for tight Hamiltonian cycles in $3$-uniform hypergraphs that (asymptotically) improves the best known pair degree condition due to Rödl, Ruciński, and Szemerédi. For graphs, Chvátal characterised all those sequences of integers for which every pointwise larger (or equal) degree sequence guarantees the existence of a Hamiltonian cycle. A step towards Chvátal's theorem was taken by Pósa, who improved on Dirac's tight minimum degree condition for Hamiltonian cycles by showing that a certain weaker condition on the degree sequence of a graph already …
Hakimi, Schmeichel, and Thomassen in 1979 conjectured that every $4$-connected planar triangulation $G$ on $n$ vertices has at least $2(n-2)(n-4)$ Hamiltonian cycles, with equality if and only if $G$ is a double wheel. In this paper, we show that every $4$-connected planar triangulation on $n$ vertices has $Ω(n^2)$ Hamiltonian cycles. Moreover, we show that if $G$ is a $4$-connected planar triangulation on $n$ vertices and the distance between any two vertices of degree $4$ in $G$ is at least $3$, then $G$ has $2^{Ω(n^{1/4})}$ Hamiltonian cycles.
Rosenfeld in 1974 conjectured that there is an integer N > 8 such that every tournament of order n > N contains every non-directed cycle of order n. We prove that, with exactly 35 exceptions, every tournament of order n > 2 contains each non-directed cycle of order m, 2 < m < n+1.
A constructive method is provided that outputs a directed graph which is named a broken crown graph, containing $5n-9$ vertices and $k$ Hamiltonian cycles for any choice of integers $n \geq k \geq 4$. The construction is not designed to be minimal in any sense, but rather to ensure that the graphs produced remain non-trivial instances of the Hamiltonian cycle problem even when $k$ is chosen to be much smaller than $n$.
The famous Dirac's Theorem gives an exact bound on the minimum degree of an $n$-vertex graph guaranteeing the existence of a hamiltonian cycle. We prove exact bounds of similar type for hamiltonian Berge cycles in $r$-uniform, $n$-vertex hypergraphs for all $3\leq r< n$. The bounds are different for $r<n/2$ and $r\geq n/2$. We also give bounds on the minimum degree guaranteeing existence of Berge cycles of length at least $k$ in such hypergraphs; the bounds are exact for all $k\geq n/2$.
For a finite set $S$ of points in the plane and a graph with vertices on $S$ consider the disks with diameters induced by the edges. We show that for any odd set $S$ there exists a Hamiltonian cycle for which these disks share a point, and for an even set $S$ there exists a Hamiltonian path with the same property. We discuss high-dimensional versions of these theorems and their relation to other results in discrete geometry.
We show that every 4-uniform hypergraph with $n$ vertices and minimum pair degree at least $(5/9+o(1))n^2/2$ contains a tight Hamiltonian cycle. This degree condition is asymptotically optimal.
In this work we present an algorithm with which any arbitrary cubic planar map may be constructed through successive edge insertion while simultaneously constructing a set of proper edge labels and Hamiltonian cycles for each configuration. We present a publicly available Python implementation of this algorithm, and discuss both theoretical and numerical support for its validity, with reference to the well-known Four Colour Theorem.
We show that every $3$-uniform hypergraph $H=(V,E)$ with $|V(H)|=n$ and minimum pair degree at least $(4/5+o(1))n$ contains a squared Hamiltonian cycle. This may be regarded as a first step towards a hypergraph version of the Pósa-Seymour conjecture.
We show that every 3-uniform hypergraph with $n$ vertices and minimum vertex degree at least $(5/9+o(1))\binom{n}2$ contains a tight Hamiltonian cycle. Known lower bound constructions show that this degree condition is asymptotically optimal.
In 1999, Jacobson and Lehel conjectured that for $k \geq 3$, every $k$-regular Hamiltonian graph has cycles of at least linearly many different lengths. This was further strengthened by Verstraëte, who asked whether the regularity can be replaced with the weaker condition that the minimum degree is at least $3$. Despite attention from various researchers, until now, the best partial result towards both of these conjectures was a $\sqrt{n}$ lower bound on the number of cycle lengths. We resolve these conjectures asymptotically, by showing that the number of cycle lengths is at least $n^{1-o(1)}…
We prove that the minimum number of Hamilton cycles in a hamiltonian threshold graph of order $n$ is $2^{\lfloor (n-3)/2\rfloor}$ and this minimum number is attained uniquely by the graph with degree sequence $n-1,n-1,n-2,\ldots,\lceil n/2\rceil,\lceil n/2\rceil,\ldots,3,2$ of $n-2$ distinct degrees. This graph is also the unique graph of minimum size among all hamiltonian threshold graphs of order $n.$
We prove that if $G$ is a $k$-partite graph on $n$ vertices in which all of the parts have order at most $n/r$ and every vertex is adjacent to at least a $1-1/r+o(1)$ proportion of the vertices in every other part, then $G$ contains the $(r-1)$-st power of a Hamiltonian cycle
We study the existence of powers of Hamiltonian cycles in graphs with large minimum degree to which some additional edges have been added in a random manner. It follows from the theorems of Dirac and of Komlós, Sarközy, and Szemerédi that for every $k\geq 1$ and sufficiently large $n$ already the minimum degree $δ(G)\ge\tfrac{k}{k+1}n$ for an $n$-vertex graph $G$ alone suffices to ensure the existence of a $k$-th power of a Hamiltonian cycle. Here we show that under essentially the same degree assumption the addition of just $O(n)$ random edges ensures the presence of the $(k+1)$-st power of a…
The balanced hypercube $BH_{n}$, a variant of the hypercube, is a novel interconnection network for massive parallel systems. It is known that the balanced hypercube remains Hamiltonian after deleting at most $4n-5$ faulty edges if each vertex is incident with at least two edges in the resulting graph for all $n\geq2$. In this paper, we show that there exists a fault-free Hamiltonian cycle in $BH_{n}$ for $n\ge 2$ with $\left | F \right |\le 5n-7$ if the degree of every vertex in $BH_{n}-F$ is at least two and there exists no $f_{4}$-cycles in $BH_{n}-F$, which improves some known results.
We show that every $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices whose minimum $(k-2)$-degree is at least $(5/9+o(1))n^2/2$ contains a Hamiltonian cycle. A construction due to Han and Zhao shows that this minimum degree condition is optimal. The same result was proved independently by Lang and Sahueza-Matamala.
For positive integers $r > \ell$, an $r$-uniform hypergraph is called an $\ell$-cycle if there exists a cyclic ordering of its vertices such that each of its edges consists of $r$ consecutive vertices, and such that every pair of consecutive edges (in the natural ordering of the edges) intersect in precisely $\ell$ vertices. Such cycles are said to be linear when $\ell = 1$, and nonlinear when $\ell > 1$. We determine the sharp threshold for nonlinear Hamiltonian cycles and show that for all $r > \ell > 1$, the threshold $p^*_{r, \ell} (n)$ for the appearance of a Hamiltonian $\ell$-cycle in t…
Chen, Faudree, Gould, Jacobson, and Lesniak determined the minimum degree threshold for which a balanced $k$-partite graph has a Hamiltonian cycle. We give an asymptotically tight minimum degree condition for Hamiltonian cycles in arbitrary $k$-partite graphs in which all parts have at most $n/2$ vertices (a necessary condition). To do this, we first prove a general result which both simplifies the process of checking whether a graph $G$ is a robust expander and gives useful structural information in the case when $G$ is not a robust expander. Then we use this result to prove that any $k$-part…
We study a certain polytope arising from embedding the Hamiltonian cycle problem in a discounted Markov decision process. The Hamiltonian cycle problem can be reduced to finding particular extreme points of a certain polytope associated with the input graph. This polytope is a subset of the space of discounted occupational measures. We characterize the feasible bases of the polytope for a general input graph $G$, and determine the expected numbers of different types of feasible bases when the underlying graph is random. We utilize these results to demonstrate that augmenting certain additional…
