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arXiv · 2110.09679

Great-circle Tree Thrackles

Karen Collins·Cleo Roberts
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Abstract

A thrackle is a graph drawing in which every pair of edges meets exactly once. The Thrackle Conjecture (established by John Conway) states that the number of edges of a thrackle cannot exceed the number of its vertices. Cairns, Koussas, and Nikolayevsky (2015) prove that the Thrackle Conjecture holds for great-circle thrackles drawn on the sphere. They also posit that the Thrackle Conjecture can be restated to say that a graph can be drawn as a thrackle drawing in the plane if and only if it admits a great-circle thrackle drawing. We demonstrate that the class of great-circle thrackleable graphs excludes some trees. Thus the informal conjecture from Cairns, Koussas, and Nikolayevsky (2015) is not equivalent to the Thrackle Conjecture.

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Karen Collins, Cleo Roberts. 2021-10-19. Great-circle Tree Thrackles. https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09679

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