Seymour-tight orientations

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Guo, Krystal, Kang, Ross J., Zwaneveld, Gabriëlle
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866918420278149120
author Guo, Krystal
Kang, Ross J.
Zwaneveld, Gabriëlle
author_facet Guo, Krystal
Kang, Ross J.
Zwaneveld, Gabriëlle
contents We investigate `almost counterexamples' to Seymour's second neighbourhood conjecture. In what we call Seymour-tight orientations, the size of the first neighbourhood of each vertex equals the size of its second neighbourhood. We give several examples and constructions. Specifically, we prove that the class of Seymour-tight orientations is closed under taking (generalized) lexicographic products. Moreover, the lexicographic product of a putative counterexample to Seymour's second neighbourhood conjecture and a Seymour-tight orientation is again a counterexample. Using lexicographic products, we show that if the conjecture is false, then there exist counterexamples that are close to regular tournaments, and moreover that any digraph occurs as an induced subgraph of a counterexample. We then use this same machinery to construct special putative counterexamples to Sullivan's conjecture. The inherent symmetry of these orientations give access to an algebraic perspective. Seymour-tight orientations that are also Cayley digraphs correspond to special pairs of critical sets in groups, which connects potentially to additive combinatorics. We use Kemperman's theorem to characterize those Seymour-tight orientations that are the Cayley digraph of an abelian group.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_29626
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Seymour-tight orientations
Guo, Krystal
Kang, Ross J.
Zwaneveld, Gabriëlle
Combinatorics
Primary 05C20, Secondary 05C76
We investigate `almost counterexamples' to Seymour's second neighbourhood conjecture. In what we call Seymour-tight orientations, the size of the first neighbourhood of each vertex equals the size of its second neighbourhood. We give several examples and constructions. Specifically, we prove that the class of Seymour-tight orientations is closed under taking (generalized) lexicographic products. Moreover, the lexicographic product of a putative counterexample to Seymour's second neighbourhood conjecture and a Seymour-tight orientation is again a counterexample. Using lexicographic products, we show that if the conjecture is false, then there exist counterexamples that are close to regular tournaments, and moreover that any digraph occurs as an induced subgraph of a counterexample. We then use this same machinery to construct special putative counterexamples to Sullivan's conjecture. The inherent symmetry of these orientations give access to an algebraic perspective. Seymour-tight orientations that are also Cayley digraphs correspond to special pairs of critical sets in groups, which connects potentially to additive combinatorics. We use Kemperman's theorem to characterize those Seymour-tight orientations that are the Cayley digraph of an abelian group.
title Seymour-tight orientations
topic Combinatorics
Primary 05C20, Secondary 05C76
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29626