Hamilton decompositions of regular expanders: applications

In a recent paper, we showed that every sufficiently large regular digraph G on n vertices whose degree is linear in n and which is a robust outexpander has a decomposition into edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. The main consequence of this theorem is that every regular tournament on n vertices can be decomposed into (n-1)/2 edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles, whenever n is sufficiently large. This verified a conjecture of Kelly from 1968. In this paper, we derive a number of further consequences of our result on robust outexpanders, the main ones are the following: (i) an undirected analogue of our result on robust outexpanders; (ii) best possible bounds on the size of an optimal packing of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in a graph of minimum degree d for a large range of values for d. (iii) a similar result for digraphs of given minimum semidegree; (iv) an approximate version of a conjecture of Nash-Williams on Hamilton decompositions of dense regular graphs; (v) the observation that dense quasi-random graphs are robust outexpanders; (vi) a verification of the `very dense' case of a conjecture of Frieze and Krivelevich on packing edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in random graphs; (vii) a proof of a conjecture of Erdos on the size of an optimal packing of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in a random tournament.Comment: final version, to appear in J. Combinatorial Theory

Optimal packings of bounded degree trees

We prove that if T1,…,Tn is a sequence of bounded degree trees such that Ti has i vertices, then Kn has a decomposition into T1,…,Tn. This shows that the tree packing conjecture of Gyárfás and Lehel from 1976 holds for all bounded degree trees (in fact, we can allow the first o(n) trees to have arbitrary degrees). Similarly, we show that Ringel's conjecture from 1963 holds for all bounded degree trees. We deduce these results from a more general theorem, which yields decompositions of dense quasi-random graphs into suitable families of bounded degree graphs. Our proofs involve Szemerédi's regularity lemma, results on Hamilton decompositions of robust expanders, random walks, iterative absorption as well as a recent blow-up lemma for approximate decompositions

Optimal packings of bounded degree trees

We prove that if T1,…,Tn is a sequence of bounded degree trees such that Ti has i vertices, then Kn has a decomposition into T1,…,Tn. This shows that the tree packing conjecture of Gyárfás and Lehel from 1976 holds for all bounded degree trees (in fact, we can allow the first o(n) trees to have arbitrary degrees). Similarly, we show that Ringel's conjecture from 1963 holds for all bounded degree trees. We deduce these results from a more general theorem, which yields decompositions of dense quasi-random graphs into suitable families of bounded degree graphs. Our proofs involve Szemerédi's regularity lemma, results on Hamilton decompositions of robust expanders, random walks, iterative absorption as well as a recent blow-up lemma for approximate decompositions

Hamilton cycles in graphs and hypergraphs: an extremal perspective

As one of the most fundamental and well-known NP-complete problems, the Hamilton cycle problem has been the subject of intensive research. Recent developments in the area have highlighted the crucial role played by the notions of expansion and quasi-randomness. These concepts and other recent techniques have led to the solution of several long-standing problems in the area. New aspects have also emerged, such as resilience, robustness and the study of Hamilton cycles in hypergraphs. We survey these developments and highlight open problems, with an emphasis on extremal and probabilistic approaches.Comment: to appear in the Proceedings of the ICM 2014; due to given page limits, this final version is slightly shorter than the previous arxiv versio

A bandwidth theorem for approximate decompositions

We provide a degree condition on a regular $n$-vertex graph $G$ which ensures the existence of a near optimal packing of any family $\mathcal H$ of bounded degree $n$-vertex $k$-chromatic separable graphs into $G$. In general, this degree condition is best possible. Here a graph is separable if it has a sublinear separator whose removal results in a set of components of sublinear size. Equivalently, the separability condition can be replaced by that of having small bandwidth. Thus our result can be viewed as a version of the bandwidth theorem of B\"ottcher, Schacht and Taraz in the setting of approximate decompositions. More precisely, let $\delta_k$ be the infimum over all $\delta\ge 1/2$ ensuring an approximate $K_k$-decomposition of any sufficiently large regular $n$-vertex graph $G$ of degree at least $\delta n$. Now suppose that $G$ is an $n$-vertex graph which is close to $r$-regular for some $r \ge (\delta_k+o(1))n$ and suppose that $H_1,\dots,H_t$ is a sequence of bounded degree $n$-vertex $k$-chromatic separable graphs with $\sum_i e(H_i) \le (1-o(1))e(G)$. We show that there is an edge-disjoint packing of $H_1,\dots,H_t$ into $G$. If the $H_i$ are bipartite, then $r\geq (1/2+o(1))n$ is sufficient. In particular, this yields an approximate version of the tree packing conjecture in the setting of regular host graphs $G$ of high degree. Similarly, our result implies approximate versions of the Oberwolfach problem, the Alspach problem and the existence of resolvable designs in the setting of regular host graphs of high degree.Comment: Final version, to appear in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Societ

Approximate Hamilton decompositions of robustly expanding regular digraphs

We show that every sufficiently large r-regular digraph G which has linear degree and is a robust outexpander has an approximate decomposition into edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles, i.e. G contains a set of r-o(r) edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. Here G is a robust outexpander if for every set S which is not too small and not too large, the `robust' outneighbourhood of S is a little larger than S. This generalises a result of K\"uhn, Osthus and Treglown on approximate Hamilton decompositions of dense regular oriented graphs. It also generalises a result of Frieze and Krivelevich on approximate Hamilton decompositions of quasirandom (di)graphs. In turn, our result is used as a tool by K\"uhn and Osthus to prove that any sufficiently large r-regular digraph G which has linear degree and is a robust outexpander even has a Hamilton decomposition.Comment: Final version, published in SIAM Journal Discrete Mathematics. 44 pages, 2 figure

Resolution of the Oberwolfach problem

The Oberwolfach problem, posed by Ringel in 1967, asks for a decomposition of $K_{2n+1}$ into edge-disjoint copies of a given $2$-factor. We show that this can be achieved for all large $n$. We actually prove a significantly more general result, which allows for decompositions into more general types of factors. In particular, this also resolves the Hamilton-Waterloo problem for large $n$.Comment: 28 page

Optimal path and cycle decompositions of dense quasirandom graphs

Motivated by longstanding conjectures regarding decompositions of graphs into paths and cycles, we prove the following optimal decomposition results for random graphs. Let $0<p<1$ be constant and let $G\sim G_{n,p}$. Let $odd(G)$ be the number of odd degree vertices in $G$. Then a.a.s. the following hold: (i) $G$ can be decomposed into $\lfloor\Delta(G)/2\rfloor$ cycles and a matching of size $odd(G)/2$. (ii) $G$ can be decomposed into $\max\{odd(G)/2,\lceil\Delta(G)/2\rceil\}$ paths. (iii) $G$ can be decomposed into $\lceil\Delta(G)/2\rceil$ linear forests. Each of these bounds is best possible. We actually derive (i)--(iii) from `quasirandom' versions of our results. In that context, we also determine the edge chromatic number of a given dense quasirandom graph of even order. For all these results, our main tool is a result on Hamilton decompositions of robust expanders by K\"uhn and Osthus.Comment: Some typos from the first version have been correcte

Euler tours in hypergraphs

We show that a quasirandom $k$-uniform hypergraph $G$ has a tight Euler tour subject to the necessary condition that $k$ divides all vertex degrees. The case when $G$ is complete confirms a conjecture of Chung, Diaconis and Graham from 1989 on the existence of universal cycles for the $k$-subsets of an $n$-set.Comment: version accepted for publication in Combinatoric