Monochromatic cycle partitions of graphs with large minimum degree
Lehel conjectured that in every $2$-coloring of the edges of $K_n$, there is a vertex disjoint red and blue cycle which span $V(K_n)$. Łuczak, Rödl, and Szemerédi proved Lehel's conjecture for large $n$, Allen gave a different proof for large $n$, and finally Bessy and Thomassé gave a proof for all $n$. Balogh, Barát, Gerbner, Gyárfás, and Sárközy proposed a significant strengthening of Lehel's conjecture where $K_n$ is replaced by any graph $G$ with $δ(G)> 3n/4$; if true, this minimum degree condition is essentially best possible. We prove that their conjecture holds when $δ(G)>(3/4+o(1))n$. Our proof uses Szemerédi's regularity lemma along with the absorbing method of Rödl, Ruciński, and Szemerédi by first showing that the graph can be covered with monochromatic subgraphs having certain robust expansion properties.