Strictly critical snarks with girth or cyclic connectivity equal to 6

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Mazák, Ján, Rajník, Jozef, Škoviera, Martin
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Mazák, Ján
Rajník, Jozef
Škoviera, Martin
author_facet Mazák, Ján
Rajník, Jozef
Škoviera, Martin
contents A snark -- connected cubic graph with chromatic index $4$ -- is critical if the graph resulting from the removal of any pair of distinct adjacent vertices is $3$-edge-colourable; it is bicritical if the same is true for any pair of distinct vertices. A snark is strictly critical if it is critical but not bicritical. Very little is known about strictly critical snarks. Computational evidence suggests that strictly critical snarks constitute a tiny minority of all critical snarks. Strictly critical snarks of order $n$ exist if and only if $n$ is even and at least 32, and for each such order there is at least one strictly critical snark with cyclic connectivity $4$. A sparse infinite family of cyclically $5$-connected strictly critical snarks is also known, but those with cyclic connectivity greater than $5$ have not been discovered so far. In this paper we fill the gap by constructing cyclically $6$-connected strictly critical snarks of each even order $n\ge 342$. In addition, we construct cyclically $5$-connected strictly critical snarks of girth 6 for every even $n\ge 66$ with $n\equiv 2\pmod8$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_16618
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Strictly critical snarks with girth or cyclic connectivity equal to 6
Mazák, Ján
Rajník, Jozef
Škoviera, Martin
Combinatorics
05C15, 05C75
A snark -- connected cubic graph with chromatic index $4$ -- is critical if the graph resulting from the removal of any pair of distinct adjacent vertices is $3$-edge-colourable; it is bicritical if the same is true for any pair of distinct vertices. A snark is strictly critical if it is critical but not bicritical. Very little is known about strictly critical snarks. Computational evidence suggests that strictly critical snarks constitute a tiny minority of all critical snarks. Strictly critical snarks of order $n$ exist if and only if $n$ is even and at least 32, and for each such order there is at least one strictly critical snark with cyclic connectivity $4$. A sparse infinite family of cyclically $5$-connected strictly critical snarks is also known, but those with cyclic connectivity greater than $5$ have not been discovered so far. In this paper we fill the gap by constructing cyclically $6$-connected strictly critical snarks of each even order $n\ge 342$. In addition, we construct cyclically $5$-connected strictly critical snarks of girth 6 for every even $n\ge 66$ with $n\equiv 2\pmod8$.
title Strictly critical snarks with girth or cyclic connectivity equal to 6
topic Combinatorics
05C15, 05C75
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.16618