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arXiv · 2507.05842

Bounded diameter monochromatic component covers

Alexey Pokrovskiy
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Abstract

Ryser conjectured that every $r$-edge-coloured complete graph can be covered by $r-1$ monochromatic trees. Motivated by a question of Austin in analysis, Mili\'cevi\'c predicted something stronger -- that every $r$-edge-coloured complete graph can be covered by $r-1$ monochromatic trees \emph{of bounded diameter}. Here we show that the two conjectures are equivalent. As immediate corollaries we obtain new results about Mili\'cevi\'c's Conjecture, most notably that it is true for $r=5$. We also obtain several new cases of a generalization of Mili\'cevi\'c's Conjecture to non-complete graphs due to DeBiasio-Kamel-McCourt-Sheats.

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Alexey Pokrovskiy. 2025-07-08. Bounded diameter monochromatic component covers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05842

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