A celebrated conjecture of Zs. Tuza says that in any (finite) graph, the minimum size of a cover of triangles by edges is at most twice the maximum size of a set of edge-disjoint triangles. Resolving a recent question of Bennett, Dudek, and Zerbib, we show that this is true for random graphs; more precisely:
\[ \mbox{for any $p=p(n)$, $\mathbb P(\mbox{$G_{n,p}$ satisfies Tuza's Conjecture})\rightarrow 1 $ (as $n\rightarrow\infty$).} \]
Tuza's Conjecture states that if a graph $G$ does not contain more than $k$ edge-disjoint triangles, then some set of at most $2k$ edges meets all triangles of $G$. We prove Tuza's Conjecture for all graphs $G$ having no subgraph with average degree at least $7$. As a key tool in the proof, we introduce a notion of reducible sets for Tuza's Conjecture; these are substructures which cannot occur in a minimal counterexample to Tuza's Conjecture. We also introduce weak König--Egerváry graphs, a generalization of the well-studied König--Egerváry graphs.
Tuza (A conjecture, in Proceedings of the Colloquia Mathematica Societatis Janos Bolyai, 1981) conjectured that $τ(G) \le 2ν(G)$ for all graphs $G$, where $τ(G)$ is the minimum size of an edge set whose removal makes $G$ triangle-free, and $ν(G)$ is the maximum size of a collection of pairwise edge-disjoint triangles. Here, we generalise Tuza's conjecture to simple binary matroids that do not contain the Fano plane as a restriction. We prove that the geometric version of the conjecture holds for cographic matroids.
The triangle packing number $ν(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the maximum size of a set of edge-disjoint triangles in $G$. Tuza conjectured that in any graph $G$ there exists a set of at most $2ν(G)$ edges intersecting every triangle in $G$. We show that Tuza's conjecture holds in the random graph $G=G(n,m)$, when $m \le 0.2403n^{3/2}$ or $m\ge 2.1243n^{3/2}$. This is done by analyzing a greedy algorithm for finding large triangle packings in random graphs.
A famous conjecture of Tuza \cite{tuza} is that the minimal number of edges needed to cover all triangles in a graph is at most twice the maximal number of edge-disjoint triangles. We propose a wider setting for this conjecture. For a hypergraph $H$ let $ν^{(m)}(H)$ be the maximal size of a collection of edges, no two of which share $m$ or more vertices, and let $τ^{(m)}(H)$ be the minimal size of a collection $C$ of sets of $m$ vertices, such that every edge in $H$ contains a set from $C$. We conjecture that the maximal ratio $τ^{(m)}(H)/ν^{(m)}(H)$ is attained in hypergraphs for which $ν^{(m…
A vertex set $D$ in a graph $G$ is $k$-dependent if $G[D]$ has maximum degree at most $k-1$, and $k$-dominating if every vertex outside $D$ has at least $k$ neighbors in $D$. Favaron proved that if $D$ is a $k$-dependent set maximizing the quantity $k|D| - |E(G[D])|$, then $D$ is $k$-dominating. We extend this result, showing that such sets satisfy a stronger structural property, and we find a surprising connection between Favaron's theorem and a conjecture of Tuza regarding packing and covering of triangles.
A long-standing conjecture of Zsolt Tuza asserts that the triangle covering number $τ(G)$ is at most twice the triangle packing number $ν(G)$, where the triangle packing number $ν(G)$ is the maximum size of a set of edge-disjoint triangles in $G$ and the triangle covering number $τ(G)$ is the minimal size of a set of edges intersecting all triangles. In this paper, we prove that Tuza's conjecture holds in the Erdős-Rényi random graph $G(n,m)$ for all range of $m$, closing the gap in what was previously known. (Recently, this result was also independently proved by Jeff Kahn and Jinyoung Park.)…
An old conjecture of Zs. Tuza says that for any graph $G$, the ratio of the minimum size, $τ_3(G)$, of a set of edges meeting all triangles to the maximum size, $ν_3(G)$, of an edge-disjoint triangle packing is at most 2. Here, disproving a conjecture of R. Yuster, we show that for any fixed, positive $α$ there are arbitrarily large graphs $G$ of positive density satisfying $τ_3(G)>(1-o(1))|G|/2$ and $ν_3(G)<(1+α)|G|/4$.
The Erdős-Szekeres conjecture states that any set of more than $2^{n-2}$ points in the plane with no three on a line contains the vertices of a convex $n$-gon. Erdős, Tuza, and Valtr strengthened the conjecture by stating that any set of more than $\sum_{i = n - b}^{a - 2} \binom{n - 2}{i}$ points in a plane either contains the vertices of a convex $n$-gon, $a$ points lying on a concave downward curve, or $b$ points lying on a concave upward curve. They also showed that the generalization is actually equivalent to the Erdős-Szekeres conjecture. We prove the first new case of the Erdős-Tuza-Val…
Erdős, Gallai, and Tuza posed the following problem: given an $n$-vertex graph $G$, let $τ_1(G)$ denote the smallest size of a set of edges whose deletion makes $G$ triangle-free, and let $α_1(G)$ denote the largest size of a set of edges containing at most one edge from each triangle of $G$. Is it always the case that $α_1(G) + τ_1(G) \leq n^2/4$? We have two main results. We first obtain the upper bound $α_1(G) + τ_1(G) \leq 5n^2/16$, as a partial result towards the Erdős--Gallai--Tuza conjecture. We also show that always $α_1(G) \leq n^2/2 - m$, where $m$ is the number of edges in $G$; this…
Given a fixed hypergraph $H$, let $\mbox{wsat}(n,H)$ denote the smallest number of edges in an $n$-vertex hypergraph $G$, with the property that one can sequentially add the edges missing from $G$, so that whenever an edge is added, a new copy of $H$ is created. The study of $\mbox{wsat}(n,H)$ was introduced by Bollobás in 1968, and turned out to be one of the most influential topics in extremal combinatorics. While for most $H$ very little is known regarding $\mbox{wsat}(n,H)$, Alon proved in 1985 that for every graph $H$ there is a limiting constant $C_H$ so that $\mbox{wsat}(n,H)=(C_H+o(1))…
We prove that if $M$ is a maximal $k$-edge-colorable subgraph of a multigraph $G$ and if $F = \{v \in V(G) : d_M(v) \leq k-μ(v)\}$, then $d_F(v) \leq d_M(v)$ for all $v \in F$. (When $G$ is a simple graph, the set $F$ is just the set of vertices having degree less than $k$ in $M$.) This implies Vizing's Theorem as well as a special case of Tuza's Conjecture on packing and covering of triangles. A more detailed version of our result also implies Vizing's Adjacency Lemma for simple graphs.
Erdős, Gallai, and Tuza posed the following problem: given an $n$-vertex graph $G$, let $τ_1(G)$ denote the smallest size of a set of edges whose deletion makes $G$ triangle-free, and let $α_1(G)$ denote the largest size of a set of edges containing at most one edge from each triangle of $G$. Is it always the case that $α_1(G) + τ_1(G) \leq n^2/4$? We also consider a variant on this conjecture: if $τ_B(G)$ is the smallest size of an edge set whose deletion makes $G$ bipartite, does the stronger inequality $α_1(G) + τ_B(G) \leq n^2/4$ always hold? By considering the structure of a minimal count…
Tuza (1981) conjectured that the size $τ(G)$ of a minimum set of edges that intersects every triangle of a graph $G$ is at most twice the size $ν(G)$ of a maximum set of edge-disjoint triangles of $G$. In this paper we present three results regarding Tuza's Conjecture. We verify it for graphs with treewidth at most $6$; we show that $τ(G)\leq \frac{3}{2}\,ν(G)$ for every planar triangulation $G$ different from $K_4$; and that $τ(G)\leq\frac{9}{5}\,ν(G) + \frac{1}{5}$ if $G$ is a maximal graph with treewidth 3. Our first result strengthens a result of Tuza, implying that $τ(G) \leq 2\,ν(G)$ for…
Given a simple graph $G=(V,E)$, a subset of $E$ is called a triangle cover if it intersects each triangle of $G$. Let $ν_t(G)$ and $τ_t(G)$ denote the maximum number of pairwise edge-disjoint triangles in $G$ and the minimum cardinality of a triangle cover of $G$, respectively. Tuza conjectured in 1981 that $τ_t(G)/ν_t(G)\le2$ holds for every graph $G$. In this paper, using a hypergraph approach, we design polynomial-time combinatorial algorithms for finding small triangle covers. These algorithms imply new sufficient conditions for Tuza's conjecture on covering and packing triangles. More pre…
For an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$, let $ν^{(m)}(H)$ denote the maximum size of a set~$M$ of edges in $H$ such that every two edges in $M$ intersect in less than $m$ vertices, and let $τ^{(m)}(H)$ denote the minimum size of a collection $C$ of $m$-sets of vertices such that every edge in $H$ contains an element of $C$. The fractional analogues of these parameters are denoted by $ν^{*(m)}(H)$ and $τ^{*(m)}(H)$, respectively. Generalizing a famous conjecture of Tuza on covering triangles in a graph, Aharoni and Zerbib conjectured that for every $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$, $τ^{(r-1)}(H)/ν^{(r-1)}(…
In this paper, we study a primal and dual relationship about triangles: For any graph $G$, let $ν(G)$ be the maximum number of edge-disjoint triangles in $G$, and $τ(G)$ be the minimum subset $F$ of edges such that $G \setminus F$ is triangle-free. It is easy to see that $ν(G) \leq τ(G) \leq 3 ν(G)$, and in fact, this rather obvious inequality holds for a much more general primal-dual relation between $k$-hyper matching and covering in hypergraphs. Tuza conjectured in $1981$ that $τ(G) \leq 2 ν(G)$, and this question has received attention from various groups of researchers in discrete mathema…
We determine the maximum number of induced cycles that can be contained in a graph on $n\ge n_0$ vertices, and show that there is a unique graph that achieves this maximum. This answers a question of Tuza. We also determine the maximum number of odd or even cycles that can be contained in a graph on $n\ge n_0$ vertices and characterise the extremal graphs. This resolves a conjecture of Chvátal and Tuza from 1988.
Consider a $3$-uniform hypergraph of order $n$ with clique number $k$ such that the intersection of all its $k$-cliques is empty. Szemerédi and Petruska proved $n\leq 8m^2+3m$, for fixed $m=n-k$, and they conjectured the sharp bound $n\leq{m+2\choose 2}$. Tuza proved the best known bound, $n\leq \frac{3}{4}m^2+m+1$, using the machinery of $τ$-critical hypergraphs. Here we propose an alternative approach, combining a decomposition process introduced by Szemerédi and Petruska with the skew version of Bollobás's theorem to prove $n\leq m^2 + 6m + 2$. While the bound obtained here is weaker than T…
A well-known conjecture of Tuza asserts that if a graph has at most $t$ pairwise edge-disjoint triangles, then it can be made triangle-free by removing at most $2t$ edges. If true, the factor 2 would be best possible. In the directed setting, also asked by Tuza, the analogous statement has recently been proven, however, the factor 2 is not optimal. In this paper, we show that if an $n$-vertex directed graph has at most $t$ pairwise arc-disjoint directed triangles, then there exists a set of at most $1.8t+o(n^2)$ arcs that meets all directed triangles. We complement our result by presenting two…
A set of edges $T$ in a graph $G$ is triangle-independent if $T$ contains at most one edge from each triangle in $G$. Let $α_1(G)$ denote the maximum size of the triangle-independent set in $G$, and let $τ_B(G)$ denote minimum size of a set $F \subseteq E(G)$ such that $G \setminus F$ is bipartite. We prove that $$α_1(G) + τ_B(G) \leq \frac{|V(G)|^2}{4},$$ verifying a conjecture due to Lehel, and independently Puleo, and a slightly weaker conjecture of Erdős, Gallai and Tuza. Further, we characterize the graphs which attain the equality.
Given a graph $G$, let $τ_1(G)$ denote the smallest size of a set of edges whose deletion makes $G$ triangle-free, and let $α_1(G)$ denote the largest size of an edge set containing at most one edge from each triangle of $G$. Erdős, Gallai, and Tuza introduced several problems with the unifying theme that $α_1(G)$ and $τ_1(G)$ cannot both be "very large"; the most well-known such problem is their conjecture that $α_1(G) + τ_1(G) \leq |V(G)|^2/4$, which was proved by Norin and Sun. We consider three other problems within this theme (two introduced by Erdős, Gallai, and Tuza, another by Norin an…
A strong edge-coloring $φ$ of a graph $G$ assigns colors to edges of $G$ such that $φ(e_1)\ne φ(e_2)$ whenever $e_1$ and $e_2$ are at distance no more than 1. It is equivalent to a proper vertex coloring of the square of the line graph of $G$. In 1990 Faudree, Schelp, Gyárfás, and Tuza conjectured that if $G$ is a bipartite graph with maximum degree 3 and sufficiently large girth, then $G$ has a strong edge-coloring with at most 5 colors. In 2021 this conjecture was disproved by Lužar, Mačajová, Škoviera, and Soták. Here we give an alternative construction to disprove the conjecture.
Tuza conjectured that for every graph $G$, the maximum size $ν$ of a set of edge-disjoint triangles and minimum size $τ$ of a set of edges meeting all triangles satisfy $τ\leq 2ν$. We consider an edge-weighted version of this conjecture, which amounts to packing and covering triangles in multigraphs. Several known results about the original problem are shown to be true in this context, and some are improved. In particular, we answer a question of Krivelevich who proved that $τ\leq 2ν^*$ (where $ν^*$ is the fractional version of $ν$), and asked if this is tight. We prove that $τ\leq 2ν^*-\frac{…
Let $G$ be a $K_p$-free graph. We say $e$ is a $K_p$-saturating edge of $G$ if $e\notin E(G)$ and $G+e$ contains a copy of $K_p$. Denote by $f_p(n, e)$ the minimum number of $K_p$-saturating edges that an $n$-vertex $K_p$-free graph with $e$ edges can have. Erdős and Tuza conjectured that $f_4(n,\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+1)=\left(1 + o(1)\right)\frac{n^2}{16}.$ Balogh and Liu disproved this by showing $f_4(n,\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+1)=(1+o(1))\frac{2n^2}{33}$. They believed that a natural generalization of their construction for $K_p$-free graph should also be optimal and made a conjecture that $f_{p+…
P. Erdős, J. Pach, R. Pollack, and Z. Tuza [J. Combin. Theory, B 47 (1989), 279--285] made conjectures for the maximum diameter of connected graphs without a complete subgraph $K_{k+1}$, which have order $n$ and minimum degree $δ$. Settling a weaker version of a problem, by strengthening the $K_{k+1}$-free condition to $k$-colorable, we solve the problem for $k=3$ and $k=4$ using a unified linear programming duality approach. The case $k=4$ is a substantial simplification of the result of É. Czabarka, P. Dankelmann, and L. A. Székely [Europ. J. Comb., 30 (2009), 1082--1089].
We prove the following 30-year old conjecture of Győri and Tuza: the edges of every $n$-vertex graph $G$ can be decomposed into complete graphs $C_1,\ldots,C_\ell$ of orders two and three such that $|C_1|+\cdots+|C_\ell|\le (1/2+o(1))n^2$. This result implies the asymptotic version of the old result of Erdős, Goodman and Pósa that asserts the existence of such a decomposition with $\ell\le n^2/4$.
Given a connected graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, with minimum degree $δ\geq 2$ and girth at least $g \geq 4$, what is the maximum radius $r$ this graph can have? Erdős, Pach, Pollack and Tuza established in the triangle-free case ($g=4$) that $r \leq \frac{n-2}δ+12$, and noted that up to the value of the additive constant, this is tight. We determine the exact value for the triangle-free case. For higher $g$ little is known. We settle the order of $r$ for $g=6,8,12$ and prove an upper bound to the order for general even $g$. Finally, we show that proving the corresponding lower bound for general e…
Let $G$ be a $K_4$-free graph, an edge in its complement is a $K_4$-\emph{saturating} edge if the addition of this edge to $G$ creates a copy of $K_4$. Erdős and Tuza conjectured that for any $n$-vertex $K_4$-free graph $G$ with $\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+1$ edges, one can find at least $(1+o(1))\frac{n^2}{16}$ $K_4$-saturating edges. We construct a graph with only $\frac{2n^2}{33}$ $K_4$-saturating edges. Furthermore, we prove that it is best possible, i.e., one can always find at least $(1+o(1))\frac{2n^2}{33}$ $K_4$-saturating edges in an $n$-vertex $K_4$-free graph with $\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+1$…
A maximum sequence $S$ of vertices in a graph $G$, so that every vertex in $S$ has a neighbor which is independent, or is itself independent, from all previous vertices in $S$, is called a Grundy dominating sequence. The Grundy domination number, $γ_{gr}(G)$, is the length of $S$. We show that for any forest $F$, $γ_{gr}(F)=|V(T)|-|\mathcal{P}|$ where $\mathcal{P}$ is a minimum partition of the non-isolate vertices of $F$ into caterpillars in which if two caterpillars of $\mathcal{P}$ have an edge between them in $F$, then such an edge must be incident to a non-leaf vertex in at least one of t…
A graph $G$ is called $F$-saturated if $G$ does not contain $F$ as a subgraph (not necessarily induced) but the addition of any missing edge to $G$ creates a copy of $F$. The saturation number of $F$, denoted by $sat(n,F)$, is the minimum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $F$-saturated graph. Determining the saturation number of complete partite graphs is one of the most important problems in the study of saturation number. The value of $sat(n,K_{2,2})$ was shown to be $\lfloor\frac{3n-5}{2}\rfloor$ by Ollmann, and a shorter proof was later given by Tuza. For $K_{2,3}$, there has been a series …
A strong edge-coloring of a graph $G$ is an assignment of colors to edges such that every color class induces a matching. We here focus on bipartite graphs whose one part is of maximum degree at most $3$ and the other part is of maximum degree $Δ$. For every such graph, we prove that a strong $4Δ$-edge-coloring can always be obtained. Together with a result of Steger and Yu, this result confirms a conjecture of Faudree, Gyárfás, Schelp and Tuza for this class of graphs.
Given an $r$-edge-coloured complete graph $K_n$, how many monochromatic connected components does one need in order to cover its vertex set? This natural question is a well-known essentially equivalent formulation of the classical Ryser's conjecture which, despite a lot of attention over the last 50 years, still remains open. A number of recent papers consider a sparse random analogue of this question, asking for the minimum number of monochromatic components needed to cover the vertex set of an $r$-edge-coloured random graph $\mathcal{G}(n,p)$. Recently, Bucić, Korándi and Sudakov established…
A graph $G$ is called $(a,b)$-choosable if for any list assignment $L$ which assigns to each vertex $v$ a set $L(v)$ of $a$ permissible colours, there is a $b$-tuple $L$-colouring of $G$. An $(a,1)$-choosable graph is also called $a$-choosable. In the pioneering paper on list colouring of graphs by Erdős, Rubin and Taylor, $2$-choosable graphs are characterized. Confirming a special case of a conjecture of Erdős--Rubin--Taylor, Tuza and Voigt proved that $2$-choosable graphs are $(2m,m)$-choosable for any positive integer $m$. On the other hand, Voigt proved that if $m$ is an odd integer, then…
An $(n,s,q)$-graph is an $n$-vertex multigraph where every set of $s$ vertices spans at most $q$ edges. In this paper, we determine the maximum product of the edge multiplicities in $(n,s,q)$-graphs if the congruence class of $q$ modulo ${s\choose 2}$ is in a certain interval of length about $3s/2$. The smallest case that falls outside this range is $(s,q)=(4,15)$, and here the answer is $a^{n^2+o(n^2)}$ where $a$ is transcendental assuming Schanuel's conjecture. This could indicate the difficulty of solving the problem in full generality. Many of our results can be seen as extending work by B…
A graceful labeling of a graph $G$ with $m$ edges consists of labeling the vertices of $G$ with distinct integers from $0$ to $m$ such that, when each edge is assigned as induced label the absolute difference of the labels of its endpoints, all induced edge labels are distinct. Rosa established two well known conjectures: all trees are graceful (1966) and all triangular cacti are graceful (1988). In order to contribute to both conjectures we study graceful labelings in the context of graph games. The Graceful game was introduced by Tuza in 2017 as a two-players game on a connected graph in whi…
In the game of cops and robber, the cops try to capture a robber moving on the vertices of the graph. The minimum number of cops required to win on a given graph $G$ is called the cop number of $G$. The biggest open conjecture in this area is the one of Meyniel, which asserts that for some absolute constant $C$, the cop number of every connected graph $G$ is at most $C \sqrt{|V(G)|}$. In a separate paper, we showed that Meyniel's conjecture holds asymptotically almost surely for the binomial random graph. The result was obtained by showing that the conjecture holds for a general class of graph…
