In 1972, Tutte posed the $3$-Flow Conjecture: that all $4$-edge-connected graphs have a nowhere zero $3$-flow. This was extended by Jaeger et al.(1992) to allow vertices to have a prescribed, possibly non-zero difference (modulo $3$) between the inflow and outflow. They conjectured that all $5$-edge-connected graphs with a valid prescription function have a nowhere zero $3$-flow meeting that prescription (we call this the Strong $3$-Flow Conjecture). Kochol (2001) showed that replacing $4$-edge-connected with $5$-edge-connected would suffice to prove the $3$-Flow Conjecture and Lovász et al.(2013) showed that the $3$-Flow and Strong $3$-Flow Conjectures hold if the edge connectivity condition is relaxed to $6$-edge-connected. Both problems are still open for $5$-edge-connected graphs.
The $3$-Flow Conjecture was known to hold for planar graphs, as it is the dual of Grötzsch's Colouring Theorem. Steinberg and Younger (1989) provided the first direct proof using flows for planar graphs, as well as a proof for projective planar graphs. Richter et al.(2016) provided the first direct proof using flows of the Strong $3$-Flow Conjecture for planar graphs. We provide two extensions to their result, that we developed in order to prove the Strong $3$-Flow Conjecture for projective planar graphs.
We prove that for any parameter r an r-locally 2-connected graph G embeds r-locally planarly in a surface if and only if a certain matroid associated to the graph G is co-graphic. This extends Whitney's abstract planar duality theorem from 1932.
Free-minor closed classes [2] and free-planar graphs [3] are considered. Versions of Kuratowski-like theorem for free-planar graphs and Kuratowski theorem for planar graphs are considered.
In 1972, Tutte posed the $3$-Flow Conjecture: that all $4$-edge-connected graphs have a nowhere zero $3$-flow. This was extended by Jaeger et al.(1992) to allow vertices to have a prescribed, possibly non-zero difference (modulo $3$) between the inflow and outflow. They conjectured that all $5$-edge-connected graphs with a valid prescription function have a nowhere zero $3$-flow meeting that prescription. Kochol (2001) showed that replacing $4$-edge-connected with $5$-edge-connected would suffice to prove the $3$-Flow Conjecture and Lovász et al.(2013) showed that both conjectures hold if the …
For integers $a\ge 2b>0$, a \emph{circular $a/b$-flow} is a flow that takes values from $\{\pm b, \pm(b+1), \dots, \pm(a-b)\}$. The Planar Circular Flow Conjecture states that every $2k$-edge-connected planar graph admits a circular $(2+\frac{2}{k})$-flow. The cases $k=1$ and $k=2$ are equivalent to the Four Color Theorem and Grötzsch's 3-Color Theorem. For $k\ge 3$, the conjecture remains open. Here we make progress when $k=4$ and $k=6$. We prove that (i) {\em every 10-edge-connected planar graph admits a circular 5/2-flow} and (ii) {\em every 16-edge-connected planar graph admits a circular …
In RSST, they "replace the mammoth hand-checking of unavoidability that A&H required, by another mammoth hand-checkable proof " (page 18). Here, the proof of unavoidability is accomplished in a lengthy structured hand-checkable proof whose entirety is presented in this document.
A graph is nearly embedded in a surface if it consists of graph $G_0$ that is embedded in the surface, together with a bounded number of vortices having no large transactions. It is shown that every large wall (or grid minor) in a nearly embedded graph, many rows of which intersect the embedded subgraph $G_0$ of the near-embedding, contains a large subwall that is planarly embedded within $G_0$. This result provides some hidden details needed for a strong version of the Robertson and Seymour's excluded minor theorem as presented in [K. Kawarabayashi, B. Mohar, Some recent progress and applicat…
A digraph is 2-regular if every vertex has both indegree and outdegree two. We define an embedding of a 2-regular digraph to be a 2-cell embedding of the underlying graph in a closed surface with the added property that for every vertex~$v$, the two edges directed away from $v$ are not consecutive in the local rotation around $v$. In other words, at each vertex the incident edges are oriented in-out-in-out. The goal of this article is to provide an analogue of Whitney's theorem on planar embeddings in the setting of 2-regular digraphs. In the course of doing so, we note that Tutte's Theorem on…
It is well known, due to Lindström, that the minors of a (real or complex) matrix can be expressed in terms of weights of flows in a planar directed graph. Another classical fact is that there are plenty of homogeneous quadratic relations involving flag minors, or Plücker coordinates of the corresponding flag manifold. Generalizing and unifying these facts and their tropical counterparts, we consider a wide class of functions on $2^{[n]}$ that are generated by flows in a planar graph and take values in an arbitrary commutative semiring, where $[n]=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$. We show that the ``universa…
A recent lower bound on the number of edges in a k-critical n-vertex graph by Kostochka and Yancey yields a half-page proof of the celebrated Grötzsch Theorem that every planar triangle-free graph is 3-colorable. In this paper we use the same bound to give short proofs of other known theorems on 3-coloring of planar graphs, among whose is the Grünbaum-Aksenov Theorem that every planar with at most three triangles is 3-colorable. We also prove the new result that every graph obtained from a triangle-free planar graph by adding a vertex of degree at most four is 3-colorable.
The chromatic number of an planar graph is not greater than four and this is known by the famous four color theorem and is equal to two when the planar graph is bipartite. When the planar graph is even-triangulated or all cycles are greater than three we know by the Heawood and the Grotszch theorems that the chromatic number is three. There are many conjectures and partial results on three colorability of planar graphs when the graph has specific cycles lengths or cycles with three edges (triangles) have special distance distributions. In this paper we have given a new three colorability crite…
A tanglegram consists of two rooted binary plane trees with the same number of leaves and a perfect matching between the two leaf sets. Tanglegrams are drawn with the leaves on two parallel lines, the trees on either side of the strip created by these lines, and the perfect matching inside the strip. If this can be done without any edges crossing, a tanglegram is called planar. We show that every non-planar tanglegram contains one of two non-planar 4-leaf tanglegrams as induced subtanglegram, which parallels Kuratowski's Theorem.
Tutte's spring embedding theorem states that, for a three-connected planar graph, if the outer face of the graph is fixed as the complement of some convex region in the plane, and all other vertices are placed at the mass center of their neighbors, then this results in a unique embedding, and this embedding is planar. It also follows fairly quickly that this embedding minimizes the sum of squared edge lengths, conditional on the embedding of the outer face. However, it is not at all clear how to embed this outer face. We consider the minimization problem of embedding this outer face, up to som…
There are two conjectures concerning planar graph colourings that are strengthenings of the four colour theorem. One concerns signed graph colouring and is proposed by Máčajová, Raspaud and Škoviera. It asserts that every signed planar graph is $4$-colourable. Another concerns list colouring and is proposed by Kündgen and Ramamurthi which asserts that if $L$ is a $2$-list assignment of a planar graph $G$, then there is an $L$-colouring of $G$ such that each colour class induces a bipartite graph. In this note we prove that the first conjecture implies the second one.
Dujmović, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood recently in [Planar graphs have bounded queue-number, Journal of the ACM, Volume 67, Issue 4, Article No.: 22, August 2020] showed some attractive graph product structure theorems for planar graphs. By using the product structure, they proved that planar graphs have bounded queue-number $48$; in [Planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number, Advances in Combinatorics, 5, 11 pp, 2020], the authors proved that planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number $768$. In this paper, still by using some product structure theorem,…
Adapting Lindström's well-known construction, we consider a wide class of functions which are generated by flows in a planar acyclic directed graph whose vertices (or edges) take weights in an arbitrary commutative semiring. We give a combinatorial description for the set of "universal" quadratic relations valid for such functions. Their specializations to particular semirings involve plenty of known quadratic relations for minors of matrices (e.g., Plücker relations) and the tropical counterparts of such relations. Also some applications and related topics are discussed.
In this paper we have given a unified graph coloring algorithm for planar graphs. The problems that have been considered in this context respectively, are vertex, edge, total and entire colorings of the planar graphs. The main tool in the coloring algorithm is the use of spiral chain which has been used in the non-computer proof of the four color theorem in 2004. A more precies explanation of the proof of the four color theorem by spiral chain coloring is also given in this paper. Then we continue to spiral-chain coloring solutions by giving the proof of other famous conjectures of Vizing's to…
Dujmović, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood [J. ACM 2020] proved that for every planar graph $G$ there is a graph $H$ with treewidth at most 8 and a path $P$ such that $G\subseteq H\boxtimes P$. We improve this result by replacing "treewidth at most 8" by "simple treewidth at most 6".
We show that the left/right relation on the set of s-t-paths of a plane graph induces a so-called submodular lattice. If the embedding of the graph is s-t-planar, this lattice is even consecutive. This implies that Ford and Fulkerson's uppermost path algorithm for maximum flow in such graphs is indeed a special case of a two-phase greedy algorithm on lattice polyhedra. We also show that the properties submodularity and consecutivity cannot be achieved simultaneously by any partial order on the paths if the graph is planar but not s-t-planar, thus providing a characterization of this class of g…
We prove that the first homology group of every planar locally transitive finite graph $G$ is a finitely generated ${\rm Aut}(G)$-module and we prove a similar result for the fundamental group of locally finite planar Cayley graphs. Corollaries of these results include Droms's theorem that planar groups are finitely presented and Dunwoody's theorem that planar locally finite transitive graphs are accessible.
Minimum cuts have been closely related to shortest paths in planar graphs via planar duality - so long as the graphs are undirected. Even maximum flows are closely related to shortest paths for the same reason - so long as the source and the sink are on a common face. In this paper, we give a correspondence between maximum flows and shortest paths via duality in directed planar graphs with no constraints on the source and sink. We believe this a promising avenue for developing algorithms that are more practical than the current asymptotically best algorithms for maximum st-flow.
By the Grunbaum-Aksenov Theorem (extending Grotzsch's Theorem) every planar graph with at most three triangles is 3-colorable. However, there are infinitely many planar 4-critical graphs with exactly four triangles. We describe all such graphs. This answers a question of Erdos from 1990.
We show that the multi-commodity max-flow/min-cut gap for series-parallel graphs can be as bad as 2, matching a recent upper bound Chakrabarti, Jaffe, Lee, and Vincent for this class, and resolving one side of a conjecture of Gupta, Newman, Rabinovich, and Sinclair. This also improves the largest known gap for planar graphs from 3/2 to 2, yielding the first lower bound that doesn't follow from elementary calculations. Our approach uses the {\em coarse differentiation} method of Eskin, Fisher, and Whyte in order to lower bound the distortion for embedding a particular family of shortest-path me…
We establish a quadratic identity for the Yamada polynomial of ribbon cubic graphs in 3-space, extending the Tutte golden identity for planar cubic graphs. An application is given to the structure of the flow polynomial of cubic graphs at zero. The golden identity for the flow polynomial is conjectured to characterize planarity of cubic graphs, and we prove this conjecture for a certain infinite family of non-planar graphs. Further, we establish exponential growth of the number of chromatic polynomials of planar triangulations, answering a question of D. Treumann and E. Zaslow. The structure u…
Ore proved that a finite group is cyclic if and only if its subgroup lattice is distributive. Now, since every subgroup of a cyclic group is normal, we call a subfactor planar algebra cyclic if all its biprojections are normal and form a distributive lattice. The main result generalizes one side of Ore's theorem and shows that a cyclic subfactor is singly generated in the sense that there is a minimal 2-box projection generating the identity biprojection. We conjecture that this result holds without assuming the biprojections to be normal, and we show that it is true for small lattices. We fin…
