On Hamilton decompositions of infinite circulant graphs

The natural infinite analogue of a (finite) Hamilton cycle is a two-way-infinite Hamilton path (connected spanning 2-valent subgraph). Although it is known that every connected 2k-valent infinite circulant graph has a two-way-infinite Hamilton path, there exist many such graphs that do not have a decomposition into k edge-disjoint two-way-infinite Hamilton paths. This contrasts with the finite case where it is conjectured that every 2k-valent connected circulant graph has a decomposition into k edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. We settle the problem of decomposing 2k-valent infinite circulant graphs into k edge-disjoint two-way-infinite Hamilton paths for k=2, in many cases when k=3, and in many other cases including where the connection set is ±{1,2,...,k} or ±{1,2,...,k - 1, 1,2,...,k + 1}

Hamiltonicity of 3-arc graphs

An arc of a graph is an oriented edge and a 3-arc is a 4-tuple $(v,u,x,y)$ of vertices such that both $(v,u,x)$ and $(u,x,y)$ are paths of length two. The 3-arc graph of a graph $G$ is defined to have vertices the arcs of $G$ such that two arcs $uv, xy$ are adjacent if and only if $(v,u,x,y)$ is a 3-arc of $G$. In this paper we prove that any connected 3-arc graph is Hamiltonian, and all iterative 3-arc graphs of any connected graph of minimum degree at least three are Hamiltonian. As a consequence we obtain that if a vertex-transitive graph is isomorphic to the 3-arc graph of a connected arc-transitive graph of degree at least three, then it is Hamiltonian. This confirms the well known conjecture, that all vertex-transitive graphs with finitely many exceptions are Hamiltonian, for a large family of vertex-transitive graphs. We also prove that if a graph with at least four vertices is Hamilton-connected, then so are its iterative 3-arc graphs.Comment: in press Graphs and Combinatorics, 201

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