39,771 research outputs found
Flows on Bidirected Graphs
The study of nowhere-zero flows began with a key observation of Tutte that in
planar graphs, nowhere-zero k-flows are dual to k-colourings (in the form of
k-tensions). Tutte conjectured that every graph without a cut-edge has a
nowhere-zero 5-flow. Seymour proved that every such graph has a nowhere-zero
6-flow.
For a graph embedded in an orientable surface of higher genus, flows are not
dual to colourings, but to local-tensions. By Seymour's theorem, every graph on
an orientable surface without the obvious obstruction has a nowhere-zero
6-local-tension. Bouchet conjectured that the same should hold true on
non-orientable surfaces. Equivalently, Bouchet conjectured that every
bidirected graph with a nowhere-zero -flow has a nowhere-zero
6-flow. Our main result establishes that every such graph has a nowhere-zero
12-flow.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figure
Nowhere-Zero 5-Flows On Cubic Graphs with Oddness 4
Tutte’s 5-flow conjecture from 1954 states that every bridge- less graph has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. It suffices to prove the conjecture for cyclically 6-edge-connected cubic graphs. We prove that every cyclically 6-edge-connected cubic graph with oddness at most 4 has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. This implies that every minimum counterexample to the 5-flow conjecture has oddness at least 6
Flows on Signed Graphs
This dissertation focuses on integer flow problems within specific signed graphs. The theory of integer flows, which serves as a dual problem to vertex coloring of planar graphs, was initially introduced by Tutte as a tool related to the Four-Color Theorem. This theory has been extended to signed graphs.
In 1983, Bouchet proposed a conjecture asserting that every flow-admissible signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 6-flow. To narrow dawn the focus, we investigate cubic signed graphs in Chapter 2. We prove that every flow-admissible 3-edge-colorable cubic signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 10-flow. This together with the 4-color theorem implies that every flow-admissible bridgeless planar signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 10-flow. As a byproduct of this research, we also demonstrate that every flow-admissible hamiltonian signed graph can admit a nowhere-zero 8-flow.
In Chapter 3, we delve into triangularly connected signed graphs. Here, A triangle-path in a graph G is defined as a sequence of distinct triangles in G such that for any i, j with , and if . We categorize a connected graph as triangularly connected if it can be demonstrated that for any two nonparallel edges and , there exists a triangle-path such that and . For ordinary graphs, Fan {\it et al.} characterized all triangularly connected graphs that admit nowhere-zero -flows or -flows. Corollaries of this result extended to integer flow in certain families of ordinary graphs, such as locally connected graphs due to Lai and certain types of products of graphs due to Imrich et al. In this dissertation, we extend Fan\u27s result for triangularly connected graphs to signed graphs. We proved that a flow-admissible triangularly connected signed graph admits a nowhere-zero -flow if and only if is not the wheel associated with a specific signature. Moreover, this result is proven to be sharp since we identify infinitely many unbalanced triangularly connected signed graphs that can admit a nowhere-zero 4-flow but not 3-flow.\\
Chapter 4 investigates integer flow problems within -minor free signed graphs. A minor of a graph refers to any graph that can be derived from through a series of vertex and edge deletions and edge contractions. A graph is considered -minor free if is not a minor of . While Bouchet\u27s conjecture is known to be tight for some signed graphs with a flow number of 6. Kompi\v{s}ov\\u27{a} and M\\u27{a}\v{c}ajov\\u27{a} extended those signed graph with a specific signature to a family \M, and they also put forward a conjecture that suggests if a flow-admissible signed graph does not admit a nowhere-zero 5-flow, then it belongs to \M. In this dissertation, we delve into the members in \M that are -minor free, designating this subfamily as . We provide a proof demonstrating that every flow-admissible, -minor free signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 5-flow if and only if it does not belong to the specified family
On flows of graphs
Tutte\u27s 3-flow Conjecture, 4-flow Conjecture, and 5-flow Conjecture are among the most fascinating problems in graph theory. In this dissertation, we mainly focus on the nowhere-zero integer flow of graphs, the circular flow of graphs and the bidirected flow of graphs. We confirm Tutte\u27s 3-flow Conjecture for the family of squares of graphs and the family of triangularly connected graphs. In fact, we obtain much stronger results on this conjecture in terms of group connectivity and get the complete characterization of such graphs in those families which do not admit nowhere-zero 3-flows. For the circular flows of graphs, we establish some sufficient conditions for a graph to have circular flow index less than 4, which generalizes a new known result to a large family of graphs. For the Bidirected Flow Conjecture, we prove it to be true for 6-edge connected graphs
Flows and bisections in cubic graphs
A -weak bisection of a cubic graph is a partition of the vertex-set of
into two parts and of equal size, such that each connected
component of the subgraph of induced by () is a tree of at
most vertices. This notion can be viewed as a relaxed version of
nowhere-zero flows, as it directly follows from old results of Jaeger that
every cubic graph with a circular nowhere-zero -flow has a -weak bisection. In this paper we study problems related to the
existence of -weak bisections. We believe that every cubic graph which has a
perfect matching, other than the Petersen graph, admits a 4-weak bisection and
we present a family of cubic graphs with no perfect matching which do not admit
such a bisection. The main result of this article is that every cubic graph
admits a 5-weak bisection. When restricted to bridgeless graphs, that result
would be a consequence of the assertion of the 5-flow Conjecture and as such it
can be considered a (very small) step toward proving that assertion. However,
the harder part of our proof focuses on graphs which do contain bridges.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures - revised versio
Nowhere-zero 8-flows in cyclically 5-edge-connected, flow-admissible signed graphs
In 1983, Bouchet proved that every bidirected graph with a nowhere-zero
integer-flow has a nowhere-zero 216-flow, and conjectured that 216 could be
replaced with 6. This paper shows that for cyclically 5-edge-connected
bidirected graphs that number can be replaced with 8.Comment: 14 page
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