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]

Improved bounds on the multicolor Ramsey numbers of paths and even cycles

We study the multicolor Ramsey numbers for paths and even cycles, $R_k(P_n)$ and $R_k(C_n)$, which are the smallest integers $N$ such that every coloring of the complete graph $K_N$ has a monochromatic copy of $P_n$ or $C_n$ respectively. For a long time, $R_k(P_n)$ has only been known to lie between $(k-1+o(1))n$ and $(k + o(1))n$. A recent breakthrough by S\'ark\"ozy and later improvement by Davies, Jenssen and Roberts give an upper bound of $(k - \frac{1}{4} + o(1))n$. We improve the upper bound to $(k - \frac{1}{2}+ o(1))n$. Our approach uses structural insights in connected graphs without a large matching. These insights may be of independent interest

Unavoidable minors in graphs and matroids

It is well known that every sufficiently large connected graph G has either a vertex of high degree or a long path. If we require G to be more highly connected, then we ensure the presence of more highly structured minors. In particular, for all positive integers k, every 2-connected graph G has a series minor isomorphic to a k-edge cycle or K_{2,k}. In 1993, Oxley, Oporowski, and Thomas extended this result to 3- and internally 4-connected graphs identifying all unavoidable series minors of these classes. Loosely speaking, a series minor allows for arbitrary edge deletions but only allows edges to be contracted when they meet a degree-2 vertex. Dually, a parallel minor allows for any edge contractions but restricts the deletion of edges to those that lie in 2-edge cycles. This dissertation begins by proving the dual results to those noted above. These identify all unavoidable parallel minors for finite graphs of low connectivity. Following this, corresponding results on unavoidable minors for infinite graphs are proved. The dissertation concludes by finding the unavoidable parallel minors for 3-connected regular matroids, which combines the results for unavoidable series and parallel minors for graphs with Seymour\u27s decomposition theorem for regular matroids

The effect of girth on the kernelization complexity of Connected Dominating Set

In the Connected Dominating Set problem we are given as input a graph $G$ and a positive integer $k$, and are asked if there is a set $S$ of at most $k$ vertices of $G$ such that $S$ is a dominating set of $G$ and the subgraph induced by $S$ is connected. This is a basic connectivity problem that is known to be NP-complete, and it has been extensively studied using several algorithmic approaches. In this paper we study the effect of excluding short cycles, as a subgraph, on the kernelization complexity of Connected Dominating Set. Kernelization algorithms are polynomial-time algorithms that take an input and a positive integer $k$ (the parameter) and output an equivalent instance where the size of the new instance and the new parameter are both bounded by some function $g(k)$. The new instance is called a $g(k)$ kernel for the problem. If $g(k)$ is a polynomial in $k$ then we say that the problem admits polynomial kernels. The girth of a graph $G$ is the length of a shortest cycle in $G$. It turns out that Connected Dominating Set is ``hard\u27\u27 on graphs with small cycles, and becomes progressively easier as the girth increases. More specifically, we obtain the following interesting trichotomy: Connected Dominating Set (a) does not have a kernel of any size on graphs of girth $3$ or $4$ (since the problem is W[2]-hard); (b) admits a $g(k)$ kernel, where $g(k)$ is $k^{O(k)}$, on graphs of girth $5$ or $6$ but has no polynomial kernel (unless the Polynomial Hierarchy (PH) collapses to the third level) on these graphs; (c) has a cubic ($O(k^3)$) kernel on graphs of girth at least $7$. While there is a large and growing collection of parameterized complexity results available for problems on graph classes characterized by excluded minors, our results add to the very few known in the field for graph classes characterized by excluded subgraphs

Homeomorphically Irreducible Spanning Trees, Halin Graphs, and Long Cycles in 3-connected Graphs with Bounded Maximum Degrees

A tree $T$ with no vertex of degree 2 is called a {\it homeomorphically irreducible tree}\,(HIT) and if $T$ is spanning in a graph, then $T$ is called a {\it homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree}\,(HIST). Albertson, Berman, Hutchinson and Thomassen asked {\it if every triangulation of at least 4 vertices has a HIST} and {\it if every connected graph with each edge in at least two triangles contains a HIST}. These two questions were restated as two conjectures by Archdeacon in 2009. The first part of this dissertation gives a proof for each of the two conjectures. The second part focuses on some problems about {\it Halin graphs}, which is a class of graphs closely related to HITs and HISTs. A {\it Halin graph} is obtained from a plane embedding of a HIT of at least 4 vertices by connecting its leaves into a cycle following the cyclic order determined by the embedding. And a {\it generalized Halin graph} is obtained from a HIT of at least 4 vertices by connecting the leaves into a cycle. Let $G$ be a sufficiently large $n$-vertex graph. Applying the Regularity Lemma and the Blow-up Lemma, it is shown that $G$ contains a spanning Halin subgraph if it has minimum degree at least $(n+1)/2$ and $G$ contains a spanning generalized Halin subgraph if it is 3-connected and has minimum degree at least $(2n+3)/5$. The minimum degree conditions are best possible. The last part estimates the length of longest cycles in 3-connected graphs with bounded maximum degrees. In 1993 Jackson and Wormald conjectured that for any positive integer $d\ge 4$, there exists a positive real number $\alpha$ depending only on $d$ such that if $G$ is a 3-connected $n$-vertex graph with maximum degree $d$, then $G$ has a cycle of length at least $\alpha n^{\log_{d-1} 2}$. They showed that the exponent in the bound is best possible if the conjecture is true. The conjecture is confirmed for $d\ge 425$

Extremal problems on special graph colorings

In this thesis, we study several extremal problems on graph colorings. In particular, we study monochromatic connected matchings, paths, and cycles in 2-edge colored graphs, packing colorings of subcubic graphs, and directed intersection number of digraphs. In Chapter 2, we consider monochromatic structures in 2-edge colored graphs. A matching M in a graph G is connected if all the edges of M are in the same component of G. Following Łuczak, there are a number of results using the existence of large connected matchings in cluster graphs with respect to regular partitions of large graphs to show the existence of long paths and other structures in these graphs. We prove exact Ramsey-type bounds on the sizes of monochromatic connected matchings in 2-edge-colored multipartite graphs. In addition, we prove a stability theorem for such matchings, which is used to find necessary and sufficient conditions on the existence of monochromatic paths and cycles: for every fixed s and large n, we describe all values of n_1, ...,n_s such that for every 2-edge-coloring of the complete s-partite graph K_{n_1, ...,n_s} there exists a monochromatic (i) cycle C_{2n} with 2n vertices, (ii) cycle C_{at least 2n} with at least 2n vertices, (iii) path P_{2n} with 2n vertices, and (iv) path P_{2n+1} with 2n+1 vertices. Our results also imply for large n of the conjecture by Gyárfás, Ruszinkó, Sárkőzy and Szemerédi that for every 2-edge-coloring of the complete 3-partite graph K_{n,n,n} there is a monochromatic path P_{2n+1}. Moreover, we prove that for every sufficiently large n, if n = 3t+r where r in {0,1,2} and G is an n-vertex graph with minimum degree at least (3n-1)/4, then for every 2-edge-coloring of G, either there are cycles of every length {3, 4, 5, ..., 2t+r} of the same color, or there are cycles of every even length {4, 6, 8, ..., 2t+2} of the same color. This result is tight and implies the conjecture of Schelp that for every sufficiently large n, every (3n-1)-vertex graph G with minimum degree larger than 3|V(G)|/4, in each 2-edge-coloring of G there exists a monochromatic path P_{2n} with 2n vertices. It also implies for sufficiently large n the conjecture by Benevides, Łuczak, Scott, Skokan and White that for every positive integer n of the form n=3t+r where r in {0,1,2} and every n-vertex graph G with minimum degree at least 3n/4, in each 2-edge-coloring of G there exists a monochromatic cycle of length at least 2t+r. In Chapter 3, we consider a collection of special vertex colorings called packing colorings. For a sequence of non-decreasing positive integers S = (s_1, ..., s_k), a packing S-coloring is a partition of V(G) into sets V_1, ..., V_k such that for each integer i in {1, ..., k} the distance between any two distinct x,y in V_i is at least s_i+1. The smallest k such that G has a packing (1,2, ..., k)-coloring is called the packing chromatic number of G and is denoted by \chi_p(G). The question whether the packing chromatic number of subcubic graphs is bounded appears in several papers. We show that for every fixed k and g at least 2k+2, almost every n-vertex cubic graph of girth at least g has the packing chromatic number greater than k, which answers the previous question in the negative. Moreover, we work towards the conjecture of Brešar, Klavžar, Rall and Wash that the packing chromatic number of 1-subdivision of subcubic graphs are bounded above by 5. In particular, we show that every subcubic graph is (1,1,2,2,3,3,k)-colorable for every integer k at least 4 via a coloring in which color k is used at most once, every 2-degenerate subcubic graph is (1,1,2,2,3,3)-colorable, and every subcubic graph with maximum average degree less than 30/11 is packing (1,1,2,2)-colorable. Furthermore, while proving the packing chromatic number of subcubic graphs is unbounded, we also consider improving upper bound on the independence ratio, alpha(G)/n, of cubic n-vertex graphs of large girth. We show that ``almost all" cubic labeled graphs of girth at least 16 have independence ratio at most 0.454. In Chapter 4, we introduce and study the directed intersection representation of digraphs. A directed intersection representation is an assignment of a color set to each vertex in a digraph such that two vertices form an edge if and only if their color sets share at least one color and the tail vertex has a strictly smaller color set than the head. The smallest possible size of the union of the color sets is defined to be the directed intersection number (DIN). We show that the directed intersection representation is well-defined for all directed acyclic graphs and the maximum DIN among all n vertex acyclic digraphs is at most 5n^2/8 + O(n) and at least 9n^2/16 + O(n)