Circumference of 3-connected claw-free graphs and large Eulerian subgraphs of 3-edge-connected graphs

AbstractThe circumference of a graph is the length of its longest cycles. Results of Jackson, and Jackson and Wormald, imply that the circumference of a 3-connected cubic n-vertex graph is Ω(n0.694), and the circumference of a 3-connected claw-free graph is Ω(n0.121). We generalize and improve the first result by showing that every 3-edge-connected graph with m edges has an Eulerian subgraph with Ω(m0.753) edges. We use this result together with the Ryjáček closure operation to improve the lower bound on the circumference of a 3-connected claw-free graph to Ω(n0.753). Our proofs imply polynomial time algorithms for finding large Eulerian subgraphs of 3-edge-connected graphs and long cycles in 3-connected claw-free graphs

Cubic graphs with large circumference deficit

The circumference $c(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the length of a longest cycle. By exploiting our recent results on resistance of snarks, we construct infinite classes of cyclically $4$-, $5$- and $6$-edge-connected cubic graphs with circumference ratio $c(G)/|V(G)|$ bounded from above by $0.876$, $0.960$ and $0.990$, respectively. In contrast, the dominating cycle conjecture implies that the circumference ratio of a cyclically $4$-edge-connected cubic graph is at least $0.75$. In addition, we construct snarks with large girth and large circumference deficit, solving Problem 1 proposed in [J. H\"agglund and K. Markstr\"om, On stable cycles and cycle double covers of graphs with large circumference, Disc. Math. 312 (2012), 2540--2544]