The spanning tree packing number of a graph $G$, denoted by $τ(G)$, is the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees contained in $G$. The study of $τ(G)$ is one of the classic problems in graph theory. Cioabă and Wong initiated to investigate $τ(G)$ from spectral perspectives in 2012 and since then, $τ(G)$ has been well studied using the second largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix in the past decade. In this paper, we further extend the results in terms of the number of edges and the spectral radius, respectively; and prove tight sufficient conditions to guarantee $τ(G)\geq k$ with extremal graphs characterized. Moreover, we confirm a conjecture of Ning, Lu and Wang on characterizing graphs with the maximum spectral radius among all graphs with a given order as well as fixed minimum degree and fixed edge connectivity. Our results have important applications in rigidity and nowhere-zero flows. We conclude with some open problems in the end.
Let T1, T2,.... Tk be spanning trees in a graph G. If for any pair of vertices u and v of G, the paths between u and v in every Ti( 0 < i < k+1) do not contain common edges then T1, T2,.... Tk are called edge-disjoint spanning trees in G. The design of multiple edge-disjoint spanning trees has applications to the reliable communication protocols. The n-dimensional augmented cube, denoted as AQn, a variation of the hypercube, possesses some properties superior to those of the hypercube. For AQn (n > 2), construction of n-1 edge-disjoint spanning trees is given the result is optimal with respect…
An edge-colored graph $G$ is called rainbow if every edge of $G$ receives a different color. The anti-Ramsey number of $t$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees, denoted by $r(n,t)$, is defined as the maximum number of colors in an edge-coloring of $K_n$ containing no $t$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Jahanbekam and West [J. Graph Theory, 2014] conjectured that for any fixed $t$, $r(n,t)=\binom{n-2}{2}+t$ whenever $n\geq 2t+2 \geq 6$. In this paper, we prove this conjecture. We also determine $r(n,t)$ when $n = 2t+1$. Together with previous results, this gives the anti-Ramsey number of …
Assume that the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ are given independent uniform $[0,1]$ edges weights. We consider the expected minimum total weight $μ_k$ of $k\geq 2$ edge disjoint spanning trees. When $k$ is large we show that $μ_k\approx k^2$. Most of the paper is concerned with the case $k=2$. We show that $\m_2$ tends to an explicitly defined constant and that $μ_2\approx 4.1704288\ldots$.
A rainbow spanning tree in an edge-colored graph is a spanning tree in which each edge is a different color. Carraher, Hartke, and Horn showed that for $n$ and $C$ large enough, if $G$ is an edge-colored copy of $K_n$ in which each color class has size at most $n/2$, then $G$ has at least $\lfloor n/(C\log n)\rfloor$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Here we strengthen this result by showing that if $G$ is any edge-colored graph with $n$ vertices in which each color appears on at most $δ\cdotλ_1/2$ edges, where $δ\geq C\log n$ for $n$ and $C$ sufficiently large and $λ_1$ is the second-smal…
The \emph{spanning tree packing number} of a graph $G$ is the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees contained in $G$. Let $k\geq 1$ be a fixed integer. Palmer and Spencer proved that in almost every random graph process, the hitting time for having $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees equals the hitting time for having minimum degree $k$. In this paper, we prove that for any $p$ such that $(\log n+ω(1))/n\leq p\leq (1.1\log n)/n$, almost surely the random graph $G(n,p)$ satisfies that the spanning tree packing number is equal to the minimum degree. Note that this bound for $p$ will allow …
In this short note, we study pairwise edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees in properly edge-coloured complete graphs, where a graph is rainbow if its edges have distinct colours. Brualdi and Hollingsworth conjectured that every $K_n$ properly edge-coloured by $n-1$ colours has $n/2$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Kaneko, Kano and Suzuki later suggested this should hold for every properly edge-coloured $K_n$. Improving the previous best known bound, we show that every properly edge-coloured $K_n$ contains $Ω(n)$ pairwise edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Independently, Pokrovskiy and…
An edge-colored graph $G$ is called \textit{rainbow} if every edge of $G$ receives a different color. Given any host graph $G$, the \textit{anti-Ramsey} number of $t$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees in $G$, denoted by $r(G,t)$, is defined as the maximum number of colors in an edge-coloring of $G$ containing no $t$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. For any vertex partition $P$, let $E(P,G)$ be the set of non-crossing edges in $G$ with respect to $P$. In this paper, we determine $r(G,t)$ for all host graphs $G$: $r(G,t)=|E(G)|$ if there exists a partition $P_0$ with $|E(G)|-|E(P_0,G)|<t…
In this paper, we characterize a mixed graph $F$ which contains $k$ edge and arc disjoint spanning mixed arborescences $F_{1}, \ldots, F_{k}$, such that for each $v \in V(F)$, the cardinality of $\{i \in [k]: v \text{ is the root of } F_{i}\}$ lies in some prescribed interval. This generalizes both Nash-Williams and Tutte's theorem on spanning tree packing for undirected graphs and the previous characterization on digraphs which was given by Cai [in: Arc-disjoint arborescences of digraphs, J. Graph Theory 7(2) (1983), 235-240] and Frank [in: On disjoint trees and arborescences, Algebraic Metho…
In this paper, we give spectral conditions to guarantee the existence of two edge disjoint cycles and two cycles of the same length. These two results can be seen as spectral analogues of Erdős and Posa's size condition and Erdős' classic problem on non existence of two cycles of the same length. By using double leading eigenvectors skill, we further give spectral condition to guarantee the existence of $k$ edge disjoint triangles.
Partially answering a question of Paul Seymour, we obtain a sufficient eigenvalue condition for the existence of $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees in a regular graph, when $k\in \{2,3\}$. More precisely, we show that if the second largest eigenvalue of a $d$-regular graph $G$ is less than $d-\frac{2k-1}{d+1}$, then $G$ contains at least $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees, when $k\in \{2,3\}$. We construct examples of graphs that show our bounds are essentially best possible. We conjecture that the above statement is true for any $k<d/2$.
We consider the class of graphs for which the edge connectivity is equal to the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees, and the natural generalization to matroids, where the cogirth is equal to the number of disjoint bases. We provide descriptions of such graphs and matroids, showing that such a graph (or matroid) has a unique decomposition. In the case of graphs, our results are relevant for certain communication protocols.
Liu, Hong, Gu, and Lai proved if the second largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of graph $G$ with minimum degree $δ\ge 2m+2 \ge 4$ satisfies $λ_2(G) < δ- \frac{2m+1}{δ+1}$, then $G$ contains at least $m+1$ edge-disjoint spanning trees, which verified a generalization of a conjecture by Cioabă and Wong. We show this bound is essentially the best possible by constructing $d$-regular graphs $\mathcal{G}_{m,d}$ for all $d \ge 2m+2 \ge 4$ with at most $m$ edge-disjoint spanning trees and $λ_2(\mathcal{G}_{m,d}) < d-\frac{2m+1}{d+3}$. As a corollary, we show that a spectral inequality on grap…
We show that for every graph $G$ that contains two edge-disjoint spanning trees, we can choose two edge-disjoint spanning trees $T_1,T_2$ of $G$ such that $|d_{T_1}(v)-d_{T_2}(v)|\leq 5$ for all $v \in V(G)$. We also prove the more general statement that for every positive integer $k$, there is a constant $c_k \in O(\log k)$ such that for every graph $G$ that contains $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees, we can choose $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees $T_1,\ldots,T_k$ of $G$ satisfying $|d_{T_i}(v)-d_{T_j}(v)|\leq c_k$ for all $v \in V(G)$ and $i,j \in \{1,\ldots,k\}$. This resolves a conjecture o…
Given a zero-sum function $β: V(G) \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}_3$ with $\sum_{v\in V(G)}β(v)=0$, an orientation $D$ of $G$ with $d^+_D(v)-d^-_D(v)= β(v)$ in $\mathbb{Z}_3$ for every vertex $v\in V(G)$ is called a $β$-orientation. A graph $G$ is $\mathbb{Z}_3$-connected if $G$ admits a $β$- orientation for every zero-sum function $β$. Jaeger et al. conjectured that every $5$-edge-connected graph is $\mathbb{Z}_3$-connected. A graph is $\langle\mathbb{Z}_3\rangle$-extendable at vertex $v$ if any pre-orientation at $v$ can be extended to a $β$-orientation of $G$ for any zero-sum function $β$. We obser…
In this paper we study the flow-property of graphs containing a spanning triangle-tree. Our main results provide a structure characterization of graphs with a spanning triangle-tree admitting a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. All these graphs without nowhere-zero $3$-flows are constructed from $K_4$ by a so-called bull-growing operation. This generalizes a result of Fan et al. in 2008 on triangularly-connected graphs and particularly shows that every $4$-edge-connected graph with a spanning triangle-tree has a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. A well-known classical theorem of Jaeger in 1979 shows that every grap…
Spectral radius conditions for edge-disjoint spanning trees in $(k+c)$-edge-connected graphs
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学数学与统计学院）；Xi’an-Budapest Joint Research Center for Combinatorics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学西安-布达佩斯组合学联合研究中心）
For any graph $G$ of order $n$, the spanning tree packing number \emph{$STP(G)$}, is the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees contained in $G$. In this paper, we obtain some sharp lower bounds for the spanning tree numbers of Cartesian product graphs and Lexicographic product graphs.
We describe a general approach of determining the distribution of spanning subgraphs in the random graph $\G(n,p)$. In particular, we determine the distribution of spanning subgraphs of certain given degree sequences, which is a generalisation of the $d$-factors, of spanning triangle-free subgraphs, of (directed) Hamilton cycles and of spanning subgraphs that are isomorphic to a collection of vertex disjoint (directed) triangles.
When $k|n$, the tree $\mathrm{Comb}_{n,k}$ consists of a path containing $n/k$ vertices, each of whose vertices has a disjoint path length $k-1$ beginning at it. We show that, for any $k=k(n)$ and $ε>0$, the binomial random graph $\mathcal{G}(n,(1+ε)\log n/ n)$ almost surely contains $\mathrm{Comb}_{n,k}$ as a subgraph. This improves a recent result of Kahn, Lubetzky and Wormald. We prove a similar statement for a more general class of trees containing both these combs and all bounded degree spanning trees which have at least $εn/ \log^9n$ disjoint bare paths length $\lceil\log^9 n\rceil$. We …
Some results on the distance spectral radius and edge-disjoint spanning trees of graphs
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学数学与统计学院）；Xi’an-Budapest Joint Research Center for Combinatorics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学西安-布达佩斯组合学联合研究中心）
We find the threshold for the existence of a collection of edge disjoint copies of $K_r$ that form a cyclic structure and span all vertices of $G_{n,p}$. We use a recent result of Riordan to give a two line proof of the main result.
The $kK_{r+1}$ is the union of $k$ disjoint copies of $(r+1)$-clique. Moon [Canad. J. Math. 20 (1968) 95--102] and Simonovits [Theory of Graphs (Proc. colloq., Tihany, 1996)] independently showed that if $n$ is sufficiently large, then $K_{k-1}\vee T_{n-k+1,r}$ is the unique extremal graph for $kK_{r+1}$. In this paper, we consider the graph which has the maximum spectral radius among all graphs without $k$ disjoint cliques. We prove that if $G$ attains the maximum spectral radius over all $n$-vertex $kK_{r+1}$-free graphs for sufficiently large $n$, then $G$ is isomorphic to $K_{k-1}\vee T_{n…
In the 1960s, Erdős and his cooperators initiated the research of the maximum numbers of edges in a graph or a planar graph on $n$ vertices without $k$ edge-disjoint cycles. This problem had been solved for $k\leq4$. As pointed out by Bollobás, it is very difficult for general $k$. Recently, Tait and Tobin [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 2017] confirmed a famous conjecture on maximum spectral radius of $n$-vertex planar graphs. Motivated by the above results, we consider two extremal problems on planar graphs without $k$ edge-disjoint cycles. We first determine the maximum number of edges in a plan…
Let $\mathcal{G}$ be the set of simple graphs (or multigraphs) $G$ such that for each $G \in \mathcal{G}$ there exists at least two non-empty disjoint proper subsets $V_{1},V_{2}\subseteq V(G)$ satisfying $V(G)\setminus(V_{1} \cup V_{2})\neq ϕ$ and edge connectivity $κ'(G)=e(V_{i},V(G)\backslash V_{i})$ for $1\leq i \leq 2$. A multigraph is a graph with possible multiple edges, but no loops. Let $τ(G)$ be the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees of a graph $G$. Motivated by a question of Seymour on the relationship between eigenvalues of a graph $G$ and bounds of $τ(G)$, we mainly gi…
The problems of maximizing the spectral radius and the number of spanning trees in a class of bipartite graphs with certain degree constraints are considered. In both the problems, the optimal graph is conjectured to be a Ferrers graph. Known results towards the resolution of the conjectures are described. We give yet another proof of a formula due to Ehrenborg and van Willigenburg for the number of spanning trees in a Ferrers graph. The main tool is a result which gives several necessary and sufficient conditions under which the removal of an edge in a graph does not affect the resistance dis…
For integer $k\geq2,$ a spanning $k$-ended-tree is a spanning tree with at most $k$ leaves. Motivated by the closure theorem of Broersma and Tuinstra [Independence trees and Hamilton cycles, J. Graph Theory 29 (1998) 227--237], we provide tight spectral conditions to guarantee the existence of a spanning $k$-ended-tree in a connected graph of order $n$ with extremal graphs being characterized. Moreover, by adopting Kaneko's theorem [Spanning trees with constraints on the leaf degree, Discrete Appl. Math. 115 (2001) 73--76], we also present tight spectral conditions for the existence of a spann…
An edge (vertex) cut $X$ of $G$ is $r$-essential if $G-X$ has two components each of which has at least $r$ edges. A graph $G$ is $r$-essentially $k$-edge-connected (resp. $k$-connected) if it has no $r$-essential edge (resp. vertex) cuts of size less than $k$. If $r=1$, we simply call it essential. Recently, Lai and Li proved that every $m$-edge-connected essentially $h$-edge-connected graph contains $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees, where $k,m,h$ are positive integers such that $k+1\le m\le 2k-1$ and $h\ge \frac{m^2}{m-k}-2$. In this paper, we show that every $m$-edge-connected and $2$-essen…
Completely independent spanning trees in a graph $G$ are spanning trees of $G$ such that for any two distinct vertices of $G$, the paths between them in the spanning trees are pairwise edge-disjoint and internally vertex-disjoint. In this paper, we present a tight lower bound on the maximum number of completely independent spanning trees in $L(G)$, where $L(G)$ denotes the line graph of a graph $G$. Based on a new characterization of a graph with $k$ completely independent spanning trees, we also show that for any complete graph $K_n$ of order $n \geq 4$, there are $\lfloor \frac{n+1}{2} \rflo…
We provide a structural description of, and invariants for, maximum spanning tree-packable graphs, i.e. those graphs G for which the edge connectivity of G is equal to the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees in G. These graphs are of interest for the k-tree protocol of Itai and Rodeh [Inform. and Comput. 79 (1988), 43-59].
Laplacian eigenvalue conditions for edge-disjoint spanning trees and a forest with constraints
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学数学与统计学院）；Xi’an-Budapest Joint Research Center for Combinatorics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学西安-布达佩斯组合学联合研究中心）
We show that for any $\varepsilon>0$ and $Δ\in\mathbb{N}$, there exists $α>0$ such that for sufficiently large $n$, every $n$-vertex graph $G$ satisfying that $δ(G)\geq\varepsilon n$ and $e(X, Y)>0$ for every pair of disjoint vertex sets $X, Y\subseteq V(G)$ of size $αn$ contains all spanning trees with maximum degree at most $Δ$. This strengthens a result of Böttcher et al.
We study three problems introduced by Bang-Jensen and Yeo [Theor. Comput. Sci. 2015] and by Bang-Jensen, Havet, and Yeo [Discret. Appl. Math. 2016] about finding disjoint "balanced" spanning rooted substructures in graphs and digraphs, which generalize classic packing problems. Namely, given a positive integer $k$, a digraph $D=(V,A)$, and a root $r \in V$, we consider the problem of finding two arc-disjoint $k$-safe spanning $r$-arborescences and the problem of finding two arc-disjoint $(r,k)$-flow branchings. We show that both these problems are FPT with parameter $k$, improving on existing …
We prove an ear-decomposition theorem for $4$-edge-connected graphs and use it to prove that for every $4$-edge-connected graph $G$ and every $r\in V(G)$, there is a set of four spanning trees of $G$ with the following property. For every vertex in $G$, the unique paths back to $r$ in each tree are edge-disjoint. Our proof implies a polynomial-time algorithm for constructing the trees.
One of the most important questions in matroid optimization is to find disjoint common bases of two matroids. The significance of the problem is well-illustrated by the long list of conjectures that can be formulated as special cases. Bérczi and Schwarcz showed that the problem is hard in general, therefore identifying the borderline between tractable and intractable instances is of interest. In the present paper, we study the special case when one of the matroids is a partition matroid while the other one is a graphic matroid. This setting is equivalent to the problem of packing rainbow spann…
A $k$-container $C(u, v)$ of a graph $G$ is a set of $k$ internally disjoint paths between $u$ and $v$. A $k$-container $C(u, v)$ of $G$ is a $k^*$-container if it is a spanning subgraph of $G$. A graph $G$ is $k^*$-connected if there exists a $k^*$-container between any two different vertices of G. A $k$-regular graph $G$ is super spanning connected if $G$ is $i^*$-container for all $1\le i\le k$. In this paper, we prove that the arrangement graph $A_{n, k}$ is super spanning connected if $n\ge 4$ and $n-k\ge 2$.
In this paper, we first prove that if the edges of $K_{2m}$ are properly colored by $2m-1$ colors in such a way that any two colors induce a 2-factor of which each component is a 4-cycle, then $K_{2m}$ can be decomposed into $m$ isomorphic multicolored spanning trees. Consequently, we show that there exist three disjoint isomorphic multicolored spanning trees in any properly (2$m-$1)-edge-colored $K_{2m}$ for $m\geq 14$.
We extend a recent argument of Kahn, Narayanan and Park (Proceedings of the AMS, to appear) about the threshold for the appearance of the square of a Hamilton cycle to other spanning structures. In particular, for any spanning graph, we give a sufficient condition under which we may determine its threshold. As an application, we find the threshold for a set of cyclically ordered copies of $C_4$ that span the entire vertex set, so that any two consecutive copies overlap in exactly one edge and all overlapping edges are disjoint. This answers a question of Frieze. We also determine the threshold…
We prove that any one-ended, locally finite Cayley graph with non-torsion generators admits a decomposition into edge-disjoint Hamiltonian (i.e. spanning) double-rays. In particular, the $n$-dimensional grid $\mathbb{Z}^n$ admits a decomposition into $n$ edge-disjoint Hamiltonian double-rays for all $n \in \mathbb{N}$.
A digraph $D=(V,A)$ has a good decomposition if $A$ has two disjoint sets $A_1$ and $A_2$ such that both $(V,A_1)$ and $(V,A_2)$ are strong. Let $T$ be a digraph with $t$ vertices $u_1,\dots , u_t$ and let $H_1,\dots H_t$ be digraphs such that $H_i$ has vertices $u_{i,j_i},\ 1\le j_i\le n_i.$ Then the composition $Q=T[H_1,\dots , H_t]$ is a digraph with vertex set $\{u_{i,j_i}\mid 1\le i\le t, 1\le j_i\le n_i\}$ and arc set $$A(Q)=\cup^t_{i=1}A(H_i)\cup \{u_{ij_i}u_{pq_p}\mid u_iu_p\in A(T), 1\le j_i\le n_i, 1\le q_p\le n_p\}.$$ For digraph compositions $Q=T[H_1,\dots H_t]$, we obtain sufficie…
Edmonds' fundamental theorem on arborescences characterizes the existence of $k$ pairwise arc-disjoint spanning arborescences with prescribed root sets in a digraph. In this paper, we study the problem of packing branchings in digraphs under cardinality constraints on their root sets by arborescence augmentation. Let $D=(V+x,A)$ be a digraph, $\mathcal{P}=$ $\{I_{1}, \ldots, I_{l} \}$ be a partition of $[k]$, $c_{1}, \ldots, c_{l}, c'_{1}, \ldots, c'_{l}$ be nonnegative integers such that $c_α \leq c'_α$ for $α\in [l]$, $F_{1}, \ldots, F_{k}$ be $k$ arc-disjoint $x$-arborescences in $D$ such t…
A strong arc decomposition of a digraph $D=(V,A)$ is a decomposition of its arc set $A$ into two disjoint subsets $A_1$ and $A_2$ such that both of the spanning subdigraphs $D_1=(V,A_1)$ and $D_2=(V,A_2)$ are strong. Let $T$ be a digraph with $t$ vertices $u_1,\dots , u_t$ and let $H_1,\dots H_t$ be digraphs such that $H_i$ has vertices $u_{i,j_i},\ 1\le j_i\le n_i.$ Then the composition $Q=T[H_1,\dots , H_t]$ is a digraph with vertex set $\cup_{i=1}^t V(H_i)=\{u_{i,j_i}\mid 1\le i\le t, 1\le j_i\le n_i\}$ and arc set \[ \left(\cup^t_{i=1}A(H_i) \right) \cup \left( \cup_{u_iu_p\in A(T)} \{u_{i…
