Hamiltonian chordal graphs are not cycle extendible

In 1990, Hendry conjectured that every Hamiltonian chordal graph is cycle extendible; that is, the vertices of any non-Hamiltonian cycle are contained in a cycle of length one greater. We disprove this conjecture by constructing counterexamples on $n$ vertices for any $n \geq 15$. Furthermore, we show that there exist counterexamples where the ratio of the length of a non-extendible cycle to the total number of vertices can be made arbitrarily small. We then consider cycle extendibility in Hamiltonian chordal graphs where certain induced subgraphs are forbidden, notably $P_n$ and the bull.Comment: Some results from Section 3 were incorrect and have been removed. To appear in SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematic

Spanning trees in random graphs

For each $\Delta>0$, we prove that there exists some $C=C(\Delta)$ for which the binomial random graph $G(n,C\log n/n)$ almost surely contains a copy of every tree with $n$ vertices and maximum degree at most $\Delta$. In doing so, we confirm a conjecture by Kahn.Comment: 71 pages, 31 figures, version accepted for publication in Advances in Mathematic

Cycles containing all vertices of maximum degree

For a graph G and an integer k, denote by Vk the set {v ε V(G) | d(v) ≥ k}. Veldman proved that if G is a 2-connected graph of order n with n ≤ 3k - 2 and |Vk| ≤ k, then G has a cycle containing all vertices of Vk. It is shown that the upper bound k on |Vk| is close to best possible in general. For the special case k = δ(G), it is conjectured that the condition |Vk| ≤ k can be omitted. Using a variation of Woodall's Hopping Lemma, the conjecture is proved under the additional condition that n ≤ 2δ(G) + δ(G) + 1. This result is an almost-generalization of Jackson's Theorem that every 2-connected k-regular graph of order n with n ≤ 3k is hamiltonian. An alternative proof of an extension of Jackson's Theorem is also presented