524 research outputs found
NP-Completeness of Perfect Matching Index of Cubic Graphs
The perfect matching index of a cubic graph G, denoted by ?(G), is the smallest number of perfect matchings needed to cover all the edges of G; it is correctly defined for every bridgeless cubic graph. The value of ?(G) is always at least 3, and if G has no 3-edge-colouring, then ?(G) ? 4. On the other hand, a long-standing conjecture of Berge suggests that ?(G) never exceeds 5. It was proved by Esperet and Mazzuoccolo [J. Graph Theory 77 (2014), 144-157] that it is NP-complete to decide for a 2-connected cubic graph whether ?(G) ? 4. A disadvantage of the proof (noted by the authors) is that the constructed graphs have 2-cuts. We show that small cuts can be avoided and that the problem remains NP-complete even for nontrivial snarks - cyclically 4-edge-connected cubic graphs of girth at least 5 with no 3-edge-colouring. Our proof significantly differs from the one due to Esperet and Mazzuoccolo in that it combines nowhere-zero flow methods with elements of projective geometry, without referring to perfect matchings explicitly
A superlinear bound on the number of perfect matchings in cubic bridgeless graphs
Lovasz and Plummer conjectured in the 1970's that cubic bridgeless graphs
have exponentially many perfect matchings. This conjecture has been verified
for bipartite graphs by Voorhoeve in 1979, and for planar graphs by Chudnovsky
and Seymour in 2008, but in general only linear bounds are known. In this
paper, we provide the first superlinear bound in the general case.Comment: 54 pages v2: a short (missing) proof of Lemma 10 was adde
Cuts in matchings of 3-connected cubic graphs
We discuss conjectures on Hamiltonicity in cubic graphs (Tait, Barnette,
Tutte), on the dichromatic number of planar oriented graphs (Neumann-Lara), and
on even graphs in digraphs whose contraction is strongly connected
(Hochst\"attler). We show that all of them fit into the same framework related
to cuts in matchings. This allows us to find a counterexample to the conjecture
of Hochst\"attler and show that the conjecture of Neumann-Lara holds for all
planar graphs on at most 26 vertices. Finally, we state a new conjecture on
bipartite cubic oriented graphs, that naturally arises in this setting.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Improved expositio
Some snarks are worse than others
Many conjectures and open problems in graph theory can either be reduced to
cubic graphs or are directly stated for cubic graphs. Furthermore, it is known
that for a lot of problems, a counterexample must be a snark, i.e. a bridgeless
cubic graph which is not 3--edge-colourable. In this paper we deal with the
fact that the family of potential counterexamples to many interesting
conjectures can be narrowed even further to the family of
bridgeless cubic graphs whose edge set cannot be covered with four perfect
matchings. The Cycle Double Cover Conjecture, the Shortest Cycle Cover
Conjecture and the Fan-Raspaud Conjecture are examples of statements for which
is crucial. In this paper, we study parameters which have
the potential to further refine and thus enlarge the set of
cubic graphs for which the mentioned conjectures can be verified. We show that
can be naturally decomposed into subsets with increasing
complexity, thereby producing a natural scale for proving these conjectures.
More precisely, we consider the following parameters and questions: given a
bridgeless cubic graph, (i) how many perfect matchings need to be added, (ii)
how many copies of the same perfect matching need to be added, and (iii) how
many 2--factors need to be added so that the resulting regular graph is Class
I? We present new results for these parameters and we also establish some
strong relations between these problems and some long-standing conjectures.Comment: 27 pages, 16 figure
On cubic bridgeless graphs whose edge-set cannot be covered by four perfect matchings
The problem of establishing the number of perfect matchings necessary to
cover the edge-set of a cubic bridgeless graph is strictly related to a famous
conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson. In this paper we prove that deciding whether
this number is at most 4 for a given cubic bridgeless graph is NP-complete. We
also construct an infinite family of snarks (cyclically
4-edge-connected cubic graphs of girth at least five and chromatic index four)
whose edge-set cannot be covered by 4 perfect matchings. Only two such graphs
were known. It turns out that the family also has interesting
properties with respect to the shortest cycle cover problem. The shortest cycle
cover of any cubic bridgeless graph with edges has length at least
, and we show that this inequality is strict for graphs of .
We also construct the first known snark with no cycle cover of length less than
.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure
Fullerene graphs have exponentially many perfect matchings
A fullerene graph is a planar cubic 3-connected graph with only pentagonal
and hexagonal faces. We show that fullerene graphs have exponentially many
perfect matchings.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
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