Directed Hamilton cycles in digraphs and matching alternating Hamilton cycles in bipartite graphs

In 1972, Woodall raised the following Ore type condition for directed Hamilton cycles in digraphs: Let $D$ be a digraph. If for every vertex pair $u$ and $v$, where there is no arc from $u$ to $v$, we have $d^+u)+d^-(v)\geq |D|$, then $D$ has a directed Hamilton cycle. By a correspondence between bipartite graphs and digraphs, the above result is equivalent to the following result of Las Vergnas: Let $G = (B,W)$ be a balanced bipartite graph. If for any $b \in B$ and $w \in W$, where $b$ and $w$ are nonadjacent, we have $d(w)+d(b) \geq |G|/2 + 1$, then every perfect matching of $G$ is contained in a Hamilton cycle. The lower bounds in both results are tight. In this paper, we reduce both bounds by $1$, and prove that the conclusions still hold, with only a few exceptional cases that can be clearly characterized.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, published on "Siam Journal on Discrete Mathematics

Spanning Cycles through Specified Edges in Bipartite Graphs

Pósa proved that if G is an n-vertex graph in which any two nonadjacent vertices have degree sum at least n + k, then G has a spanning cycle containing any specified family of disjoint paths with a total of k edges. We consider the analogous problem for a bipartite graph G with n vertices and parts of equal size. Let F be a subgraph of G whose components are nontrivial paths. Let k be the number of edges in F, and let t1 and t2 be the numbers of components of F having odd and even length, respectively. We prove that G has a spanning cycle containing F if any two nonadjacent vertices in opposite partite sets have degree-sum at least n/2 + τ(F), where τ(F) = ⌈k/2 ⌉ + ɛ (here ɛ = 1 if t1 = 0 or if (t1, t2) ∈ {(1, 0), (2, 0)}, and ɛ = 0 otherwise). We show also that this threshold on the degree-sum is sharp when n> 3k.