On some intriguing problems in Hamiltonian graph theory -- A survey

We survey results and open problems in Hamiltonian graph theory centred around three themes: regular graphs, $t$-tough graphs, and claw-free graphs

Some local--global phenomena in locally finite graphs

In this paper we present some results for a connected infinite graph $G$ with finite degrees where the properties of balls of small radii guarantee the existence of some Hamiltonian and connectivity properties of $G$. (For a vertex $w$ of a graph $G$ the ball of radius $r$ centered at $w$ is the subgraph of $G$ induced by the set $M_r(w)$ of vertices whose distance from $w$ does not exceed $r$). In particular, we prove that if every ball of radius 2 in $G$ is 2-connected and $G$ satisfies the condition $d_G(u)+d_G(v)\geq |M_2(w)|-1$ for each path $uwv$ in $G$, where $u$ and $v$ are non-adjacent vertices, then $G$ has a Hamiltonian curve, introduced by K\"undgen, Li and Thomassen (2017). Furthermore, we prove that if every ball of radius 1 in $G$ satisfies Ore's condition (1960) then all balls of any radius in $G$ are Hamiltonian.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures; journal accepted versio

2-factors with k cycles in Hamiltonian graphs

A well known generalisation of Dirac's theorem states that if a graph $G$ on $n\ge 4k$ vertices has minimum degree at least $n/2$ then $G$ contains a $2$-factor consisting of exactly $k$ cycles. This is easily seen to be tight in terms of the bound on the minimum degree. However, if one assumes in addition that $G$ is Hamiltonian it has been conjectured that the bound on the minimum degree may be relaxed. This was indeed shown to be true by S\'ark\"ozy. In subsequent papers, the minimum degree bound has been improved, most recently to $(2/5+\varepsilon)n$ by DeBiasio, Ferrara, and Morris. On the other hand no lower bounds close to this are known, and all papers on this topic ask whether the minimum degree needs to be linear. We answer this question, by showing that the required minimum degree for large Hamiltonian graphs to have a $2$-factor consisting of a fixed number of cycles is sublinear in $n.$Comment: 13 pages, 6 picture

Hamilton cycles, minimum degree and bipartite holes

We present a tight extremal threshold for the existence of Hamilton cycles in graphs with large minimum degree and without a large ``bipartite hole`` (two disjoint sets of vertices with no edges between them). This result extends Dirac's classical theorem, and is related to a theorem of Chv\'atal and Erd\H{o}s. In detail, an $(s, t)$-bipartite-hole in a graph $G$ consists of two disjoint sets of vertices $S$ and $T$ with $|S|= s$ and $|T|=t$ such that there are no edges between $S$ and $T$; and $\widetilde{\alpha}(G)$ is the maximum integer $r$ such that $G$ contains an $(s, t)$-bipartite-hole for every pair of non-negative integers $s$ and $t$ with $s + t = r$. Our central theorem is that a graph $G$ with at least $3$ vertices is Hamiltonian if its minimum degree is at least $\widetilde{\alpha}(G)$. From the proof we obtain a polynomial time algorithm that either finds a Hamilton cycle or a large bipartite hole. The theorem also yields a condition for the existence of $k$ edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. We see that for dense random graphs $G(n,p)$, the probability of failing to contain many edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles is $(1 - p)^{(1 + o(1))n}$. Finally, we discuss the complexity of calculating and approximating $\widetilde{\alpha}(G)$

The period functions' higher order derivatives

We prove a formula for the $n$-th derivative of the period function $T$ in a period annulus of a planar differential system. For $n = 1$, we obtain Freire, Gasull and Guillamon formula for the period's first derivative \cite{FGG}. We apply such a result to hamiltonian systems with separable variables and other systems. We give some sufficient conditions for the period function of conservative second order O.D.E.'s to be convex.Comment: 2 figure

The Salesman's Improved Tours for Fundamental Classes

Finding the exact integrality gap $\alpha$ for the LP relaxation of the metric Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) has been an open problem for over thirty years, with little progress made. It is known that $4/3 \leq \alpha \leq 3/2$, and a famous conjecture states $\alpha = 4/3$. For this problem, essentially two "fundamental" classes of instances have been proposed. This fundamental property means that in order to show that the integrality gap is at most $\rho$ for all instances of metric TSP, it is sufficient to show it only for the instances in the fundamental class. However, despite the importance and the simplicity of such classes, no apparent effort has been deployed for improving the integrality gap bounds for them. In this paper we take a natural first step in this endeavour, and consider the $1/2$-integer points of one such class. We successfully improve the upper bound for the integrality gap from $3/2$ to $10/7$ for a superclass of these points, as well as prove a lower bound of $4/3$ for the superclass. Our methods involve innovative applications of tools from combinatorial optimization which have the potential to be more broadly applied