Hamiltonian Cycles in Regular Graphs

Hamilton cycles in regular graphs

A recent result by Kardoš et al. (2023) related to the famous Berge–Fulkerson conjecture implies that given an arbitrary set of odd pairwise edge-disjoint cycles, say O , in a bridgeless cubic graph, there exists a 1-factor intersecting all cycles in O in at least one edge. This remarkable result opens up natural generalizations in the case of an r -regular graph G and a t -factor F , with r and t being positive integers. In this paper, we start the study of this problem by proving necessary and sufficient conditions on G , t and r to assure the existence of a suitable F for any possible choice of the set O . First of all, we show that G needs to be 2-connected. Under this additional assumption, we highlight how the ratio t r seems to play a crucial role in assuring the existence of a t -factor F with the required properties by proving that t r ≥ 1 3 is a further necessary condition. We suspect that this condition is also sufficient, and we confirm it in the case t r = 1 3 , generalizing the case t = 1 and r = 3 proved by Kardoš, Máčajová, Zerafa, and in the case t r = 1 2 with t even. Finally, we provide further results for the case where even cycles are included.

On packing Hamilton cycles in [formula omitted]-regular graphs

For the set of graphs with a given degree sequence, consisting of any number of $2's$ and $1's$, and its subset of bipartite graphs, we characterize the optimal graphs who maximize and minimize the number of $m$-matchings. We find the expected value of the number of $m$-matchings of $r$-regular bipartite graphs on $2n$ vertices with respect to the two standard measures. We state and discuss the conjectured upper and lower bounds for $m$-matchings in $r$-regular bipartite graphs on $2n$ vertices, and their asymptotic versions for infinite $r$-regular bipartite graphs. We prove these conjectures for $2$-regular bipartite graphs and for $m$-matchings with $m\le 4$.

Vertex-magic labelings of regular graphs II

A 1-factorisation of a graph G is a decomposition of G into edge-disjoint 1-factors (1-regular spanning subgraphs). A perfect 1-factorisation is a 1-factorisation in which the union of every pair of distinct 1-factors is a Hamilton cycle; a 1-factorisation is uniform if the graphs resulting from the union of every pair of distinct 1-factors are isomorphic. We initiate the study of perfect 1-factorisations and uniform 1-factorisations of circulant graphs, a well-studied family of Cayley graphs, by determining whether or not such 1-factorisations exist for even order circulant graphs of small degree. For a bipartite circulant graph, we observe that having order congruent to 2 (mod 4) is a necessary condition for the existence of a perfect 1-factorisation. We prove that for bipartite 3-regular circulant graphs this necessary condition is also sufficient. Furthermore, the bipartite 3-regular circulant graphs of order 2 (mod 4) are the only 3-regular circulant graphs of order greater than 6 which admit a perfect 1-factorisation. The 4-regular case is more complex; we provide constructions of perfect 1-factorisations for many families of bipartite 4-regular circulant graphs of order 2 (mod 4); however, we also prove that there is an infinite family of such graphs no member of which admits a perfect 1-factorisation. We conjecture that a connected non-bipartite 4-regular circulant graph of order at least 8 does not admit a perfect 1-factorisation; we prove this conjecture for three distinct infinite families of non-bipartite 4-regular circulant graphs and show by computer search that the conjecture holds for small orders (at most 30). Several of our results are achieved by studying perfect 1-factorisations of a particular family of 4-regular graphs, denoted Dh, k for integers h, knwhere h g 2 and k g 3. These graphs are shown to be isomorphic to Cayley graphs when k is even and yet they are not vertex-transitive when k is odd (and hng 3). For small values of h, we make use of the structure of Dh,k to determine when it admits a perfect 1-factorisation and then use specific isomorphism results to obtain corresponding results for 4-regular circulant graphs. In this thesis the connected 3-regular circulant graphs that admit a perfect 1-factorisation are characterised and although the connected 4-regular circulant graphs that admit a perfect 1-factorisation have not yet been fully characterised, we provide many interesting theoretical results that establish the framework for such a characterisation.n

Motivated by work of Haythorpe, Thomassen and the author showed that there exists a positive constant $c$ such that there is an infinite family of 4-regular 4-connected graphs, each containing exactly $c$ Hamiltonian cycles. We complement this by proving that the same conclusion holds for planar 4-regular 3-connected graphs, although it does not hold for planar 4-regular 4-connected graphs by a result of Brinkmann and Van Cleemput [European J. Combin., 97 (2021), 103395], and that it holds for 4-regular graphs of connectivity 2 with the constant $144 < c$, which we believe to be minimal among all Hamiltonian 4-regular graphs of sufficiently large order. We then disprove a conjecture of Haythorpe by showing that for every nonnegative integer $k$ there is a 5-regular graph on $26 + 6k$ vertices with $2^{k+10} \cdot 3^{k+3}$ Hamiltonian cycles. We prove that for every $d \ge 3$ there is an infinite family of Hamiltonian 3-connected graphs with minimum degree $d$, with a bounded number of Hamiltonian cycles. It is shown that if a 3-regular graph $G$ has a unique longest cycle $C$, at least two components of $G - E(C)$ have an odd number of vertices on $C$, and that there exist 3-regular graphs with exactly two such components.

An antimagic labeling of a graph G is a bijection f:E(G)→{1,…,|E(G)|} such that the weights w(x)=∑y∼xf(y) distinguish all vertices. A well-known conjecture of Hartsfield and Ringel (1990) is that every connected graph other than K2 admits an antimagic labeling. For a set of distances D, a D-antimagic labeling of a graph G is a bijection f:V(G)→{1,…,|V(G)|} such that the weightω(x)=∑y∈ND(x)f(y) is distinct for each vertex x, where ND(x)={y∈V(G)|d(x,y)∈D} is the D-neigbourhood set of a vertex x. If ND(x)=r, for every vertex x in G, a graph G is said to be (D,r)-regular. In this paper, we conjecture that a graph admits a D-antimagic labeling if and only if it does not contain two vertices having the same D-neighborhood set. We also provide evidence that the conjecture is true. We present computational results that, for D={1}, all graphs of order up to 8 concur with the conjecture. We prove that the set of (D,r)-regular D-antimagic graphs is closed under union. We provide examples of disjoint union of symmetric (D,r)-regular that are D-antimagic and examples of disjoint union of non-symmetric non-(D,r)-regular graphs that are D-antimagic. Furthermore, lastly, we show that it is possible to obtain a D-antimagic graph from a previously known distance antimagic graph.

We develop novel methods for constructing nearly Hamilton cycles in sublinear expanders with good regularity properties, as well as new techniques for finding such expanders in general graphs. These methods are of independent interest due to their potential for various applications to embedding problems in sparse graphs. In particular, using these tools, we make substantial progress towards a 20‐year‐old conjecture of Verstraëte, which asserts that for any given graph , nearly all vertices of every ‐regular graph can be covered by vertex‐disjoint ‐subdivisions. This significantly extends previous work on the conjecture by Kelmans, Mubayi and Sudakov, Alon and Kühn and Osthus. Additionally, we present applications of our methods to two other problems.

In this paper it is shown that if a graph G possesses a spanning subgraph H with a strong vertex magic total labeling (VMTL) and $G-E(H)$ is even‐regular, then G also has a strong VMTL. Among other things, this is used to conclude that all Hamiltonian regular graphs of odd order possess strong VMTLs. A relationship is then demonstrated between regular graphs of even degree and sparse magic squares. We next consider cubic graphs of order $2n$ consisting of two 2‐factors of order n, connected by a 1‐factor (quasi‐prisms). Based on McQuillan’s construction of VMTLs of such 3‐regular graphs, VMTLs are derived for similar regular graphs of any odd degree. Finally, a construction is given for VMTLs of quartic graphs of order $4n+2$ consisting of two cycles of odd order n connected by a 2‐factor (simple quasi‐anti‐prisms), and based on this construction VMTLs are derived for similar regular graphs of any even degree.

On regular graphs and Hamiltonian circuits, including answers to some questions of Joseph Zaks

Independent Dominating Sets and a Second Hamiltonian Cycle in Regular Graphs

The distance d(v,u) from a vertex v of G to a vertex u is the length of shortest v to u path. The eccentricity ev of v is the distance to a farthest vertex from v. If d(v,u) = e(v), (u ≠ v), we say that u is an eccentric vertex of v. The radius rad(G) is the minimum eccentricity of the vertices, whereas the diameter diam(G) is the maximum eccentricity. A vertex v is a central vertex if e(v) = rad(G), and a vertex is a peripheral vertex if e(v) = diam(G). A graph is self-centered if every vertex has the same eccentricity; that is, rad(G) = diam(G). The distance degree sequence (dds) of a vertex v in a graph G = (V, E) is a list of the number of vertices at distance 1, 2, ... . , e(v) in that order, where e(v) denotes the eccentricity of v in G. Thus, the sequence (di0,di1,di2, …, dij,…) is the distance degree sequence of the vertex vi in G where dij denotes the number of vertices at distance j from vi. The concept of distance degree regular (DDR) graphs was introduced by Bloom et al., as the graphs for which all vertices have the same distance degree sequence. By definition, a DDR graph must be a regular graph, but a regular graph may not be DDR. A graph is distance degree injective (DDI) graph if no two vertices have the same distance degree sequence. DDI graphs are highly irregular, in comparison with the DDR graphs. In this paper we present an exhaustive review of the two concepts of DDR and DDI graphs. The paper starts with an insight into all distance related sequences and their applications. All the related open problems are listed.

Large graphs are sometimes studied through their degree sequences (power law or regular graphs). We study graphs that are uniformly chosen with a given degree sequence. Under mild conditions, it is shown that sequences of such graphs have graph limits in the sense of Lov\'{a}sz and Szegedy with identifiable limits. This allows simple determination of other features such as the number of triangles. The argument proceeds by studying a natural exponential model having the degree sequence as a sufficient statistic. The maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) of the parameters is shown to be unique and consistent with high probability. Thus $n$ parameters can be consistently estimated based on a sample of size one. A fast, provably convergent, algorithm for the MLE is derived. These ingredients combine to prove the graph limit theorem. Along the way, a continuous version of the Erd\H{o}s--Gallai characterization of degree sequences is derived.

A Hamiltonian graph $G$ of order $n$ is $k$-ordered, $2\leq k \leq n$, if for every sequence $v_1, v_2, \ldots ,v_k$ of $k$ distinct vertices of $G$, there exists a Hamiltonian cycle that encounters $v_1, v_2, \ldots , v_k$ in this order. In this paper, answering a question of Ng and Schultz, we give a sharp bound for the minimum degree guaranteeing that a graph is a $k$-ordered Hamiltonian graph under some mild restrictions. More precisely, we show that there are $\varepsilon, n_0> 0$ such that if $G$ is a graph of order $n\geq n_0$ with minimum degree at least $\lceil \frac{n}{2} \rceil + \lfloor \frac{k}{2} \rfloor - 1$ and $2\leq k \leq \eps n$, then $G$ is a $k$-ordered Hamiltonian graph. It is also shown that this bound is sharp for every $2\leq k \leq \lfloor \frac{n}{2} \rfloor$.