Proof of a conjecture of Voss on bridges of longest cycles

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ma, Jie, Xu, Rongxing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ma, Jie
Xu, Rongxing
author_facet Ma, Jie
Xu, Rongxing
contents Bridges are a classical concept in structural graph theory and play a fundamental role in the study of cycles. A conjecture of Voss from 1991 asserts that if disjoint bridges $B_1, B_2, \ldots, B_k$ of a longest cycle $L$ in a $2$-connected graph overlap in a tree-like manner (i.e., induce a tree in the {\it overlap graph} of $L$), then the total {\it length} of these bridges is at most half the length of $L$. Voss established this for $k \leq 3$ and used it as a key tool in his 1991 monograph on cycles and bridges. In this paper, we confirm the conjecture in full via a reduction to a cycle covering problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_06345
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Proof of a conjecture of Voss on bridges of longest cycles
Ma, Jie
Xu, Rongxing
Combinatorics
Bridges are a classical concept in structural graph theory and play a fundamental role in the study of cycles. A conjecture of Voss from 1991 asserts that if disjoint bridges $B_1, B_2, \ldots, B_k$ of a longest cycle $L$ in a $2$-connected graph overlap in a tree-like manner (i.e., induce a tree in the {\it overlap graph} of $L$), then the total {\it length} of these bridges is at most half the length of $L$. Voss established this for $k \leq 3$ and used it as a key tool in his 1991 monograph on cycles and bridges. In this paper, we confirm the conjecture in full via a reduction to a cycle covering problem.
title Proof of a conjecture of Voss on bridges of longest cycles
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06345