SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2109.03060

Betwixt and between 2-factor Hamiltonian and Perfect-Matching-Hamiltonian graphs

Abstract

A Hamiltonian graph is 2-factor Hamiltonian (2FH) if each of its 2-factors is a Hamiltonian cycle. A similar, but weaker, property is the Perfect-Matching-Hamiltonian property (PMH-property): a graph admitting a perfect matching is said to have this property if each one of its perfect matchings (1-factors) can be extended to a Hamiltonian cycle. It was shown that the star product operation between two bipartite 2FH-graphs is necessary and sufficient for a bipartite graph admitting a 3-edge-cut to be 2FH. The same cannot be said when dealing with the PMH-property, and in this work we discuss how one can use star products to obtain graphs (which are not necessarily bipartite, regular and 2FH) admitting the PMH-property with the help of malleable vertices, which we introduce here. We show that the presence of a malleable vertex in a graph implies that the graph has the PMH-property, but does not necessarily imply that it is 2FH. It was also conjectured that if a graph is a bipartite cubic 2FH-graph, then it can only be obtained from the complete bipartite graph $K_{3,3}$ and the Heawood graph by using star products. Here, we show that a cubic graph (not necessarily bipartite) is 2FH if and only if all of its vertices are malleable. We also prove that the above conjecture is equivalent to saying that, apart from the Heawood graph, every bipartite cyclically 4-edge-connected cubic graph with girth at least 6 having the PMH-property admits a perfect matching which can be extended to a Hamiltonian cycle in exactly one way. Finally, we also give two necessary and sufficient conditions for a graph admitting a 2-edge-cut to be: (i) 2FH, and (ii) PMH.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Federico Romaniello, Jean Paul Zerafa. 2021-09-07. Betwixt and between 2-factor Hamiltonian and Perfect-Matching-Hamiltonian graphs. https://doi.org/10.37236/10988

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Balanced even cycles in signed graphs:Tur\'an bounds, double covers, and parity obstructions

We study Tur\'an problems for balanced even cycles in simple signed graphs, where signed subgraphs are considered up to switching. For every balanced bipartite signed graph, the signed and ordinary Tur\'an numbers differ by at most a factor of two. Our main structural results concern the underlying graphs that admit a signing in which every $2k$-cycle is unbalanced. We characterize these graphs by the absence of an odd dependence among their $2k$-cycle incidence vectors, give a cohomological formulation, and construct subgraph-minimal obstructions of arbitrarily large order. In particular, there is no finite forbidden-subgraph characterization. We also give an exact closed-walk criterion for cycles in double covers and derive a direct signed breadth-first-search upper bound. As applications, we prove \[ \hex(n,C_{+4})=\left(\frac{\sqrt2}{2}+o(1)\right)n^{3/2} \] and study the signed hexagon number $R_6(n)=\hex(n,\{C_{-3},C_{+6}\})$. We characterize the underlying graphs counted by $R_6$ and express it as an extremal problem for ordinary $C_6$-free graphs with a prescribed involution. For every sufficiently large $n$, we construct examples with $\Omega(n^{4/3})$ edges, and we give an equivariant construction attaining the coefficient obtained from the F\"uredi--Naor--Verstra\"ete lower bound by double-cover transfer. Finally, we give $n$-vertex $C_{+10}$-free signed graphs with $\Omega(n^{6/5})$ edges and use octagon examples to illustrate the limitations of theta-freeness as a signing criterion.

math.CO

Fractional DP-colorings of $d$-degenerate locally sparse graphs

Bernshteyn, Kostochka, and Zhu (2020) introduced the notion of fractional DP-coloring, which generalizes both fractional coloring and fractional list coloring. Among several foundational results, they proved that every $d$-degenerate bipartite graph $G$ satisfies $\chi_f^{\mathrm{DP}} \le (1 + o(1))\frac{d}{\log d}$, and that this bound is optimal---a stark contrast to ordinary fractional coloring. In this paper, we extend this upper bound to all $d$-degenerate triangle-free graphs, proving that $\chi_f^{\mathrm{DP}} \le (4 + o(1))\frac{d}{\log d}$. This generalizes a recent result of Martinsson and Steiner (2025) for ordinary fractional coloring. We derive this result as a corollary of a more general upper bound concerning locally sparse graph orderings. Specifically, a $d$-degenerate graph $G$ is left $k$-locally-sparse if it admits a degeneracy ordering in which, for every vertex $v$, the subgraph induced by its back-neighbors contains at most $k$ edges. We show that if a $d$-degenerate graph $G$ is left $\frac{d^2}{f}$-locally-sparse, then \[ \chi_f^{\mathrm{DP}}(G) \le (8 + o(1))\frac{d}{\log f}. \] This immediately yields an identical upper bound on the ordinary fractional chromatic number $\chi_f(G)$, improving upon the leading constants of previously known bounds. Additionally, we establish the asymptotic sharpness of this result up to the leading constant. For any $1 \ll f \le d^2$, we construct $d$-degenerate graphs that are left $\frac{d^2}{f}$-locally-sparse and satisfy $\chi_f(G) \ge (1 - o(1))\frac{d}{\log f}$. Finally, as applications of our main theorem, we obtain improved upper bounds on the fractional DP-chromatic number of $d$-degenerate $K_{1,t,t}$-free graphs, as well as $K_{t,t,t}$-free graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$. Notably, these bounds improve upon existing results even in the setting of ordinary fractional coloring.

math.CO

Erd\H{o}s-S\'{o}s for digraphs

It is shown that every Eulerian digraph on $n$ vertices with more than $(t-1)n$ arcs contains every oriented tree with $t$ edges. The digraphs have no loops or repeated arcs, but opposite arcs are permitted. The bound is sharp for each fixed oriented tree, as witnessed by disjoint unions of complete bidirected graphs. Previously, such tight bounds were not known, even just for directed paths. This can be considered as a directed analog of the recently proved Erd\H{o}s-S\'os conjecture. The result was proved by GPT-6 Astra.

math.CO