On the existence of factors intersecting sets of cycles in regular graphs

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Auteurs principaux: Goedgebeur, Jan, Mattiolo, Davide, Mazzuoccolo, Giuseppe, Renders, Jarne, Toffanetti, Luca, Wolf, Isaak H.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Goedgebeur, Jan
Mattiolo, Davide
Mazzuoccolo, Giuseppe
Renders, Jarne
Toffanetti, Luca
Wolf, Isaak H.
author_facet Goedgebeur, Jan
Mattiolo, Davide
Mazzuoccolo, Giuseppe
Renders, Jarne
Toffanetti, Luca
Wolf, Isaak H.
contents A recent result by Kardoš, Máčajová and Zerafa [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B. 160 (2023) 1--14] related to the famous Berge-Fulkerson conjecture implies that given an arbitrary set of odd pairwise edge-disjoint cycles, say $\mathcal O$, in a bridgeless cubic graph, there exists a $1$-factor intersecting all cycles in $\mathcal O$ 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 $\mathcal O$. First of all, we show that $G$ needs to be $2$-connected. Under this additional assumption, we highlight how the ratio $\frac{t}{r}$ seems to play a crucial role in assuring the existence of a $t$-factor $F$ with the required properties by proving that $\frac{t}{r} \geq \frac{1}{3}$ is a further necessary condition. We suspect that this condition is also sufficient, and we confirm it in the case $\frac{t}{r}=\frac{1}{3}$, generalizing the case $t=1$ and $r=3$ proved by Kardoš, Máčajová, Zerafa, and in the case $\frac{t}{r}=\frac{1}{2}$ with $t$ even. Finally, we provide further results for the case where even cycles are included.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_09806
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the existence of factors intersecting sets of cycles in regular graphs
Goedgebeur, Jan
Mattiolo, Davide
Mazzuoccolo, Giuseppe
Renders, Jarne
Toffanetti, Luca
Wolf, Isaak H.
Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
A recent result by Kardoš, Máčajová and Zerafa [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B. 160 (2023) 1--14] related to the famous Berge-Fulkerson conjecture implies that given an arbitrary set of odd pairwise edge-disjoint cycles, say $\mathcal O$, in a bridgeless cubic graph, there exists a $1$-factor intersecting all cycles in $\mathcal O$ 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 $\mathcal O$. First of all, we show that $G$ needs to be $2$-connected. Under this additional assumption, we highlight how the ratio $\frac{t}{r}$ seems to play a crucial role in assuring the existence of a $t$-factor $F$ with the required properties by proving that $\frac{t}{r} \geq \frac{1}{3}$ is a further necessary condition. We suspect that this condition is also sufficient, and we confirm it in the case $\frac{t}{r}=\frac{1}{3}$, generalizing the case $t=1$ and $r=3$ proved by Kardoš, Máčajová, Zerafa, and in the case $\frac{t}{r}=\frac{1}{2}$ with $t$ even. Finally, we provide further results for the case where even cycles are included.
title On the existence of factors intersecting sets of cycles in regular graphs
topic Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09806