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

Powers of Hamilton cycles in pseudorandom graphs

We study the appearance of powers of Hamilton cycles in pseudorandom graphs, using the following comparatively weak pseudorandomness notion. A graph $G$ is $(\varepsilon,p,k,\ell)$-pseudorandom if for all disjoint $X$ and $Y\subset V(G)$ with $|X|\ge\varepsilon p^kn$ and $|Y|\ge\varepsilon p^\ell n$ we have $e(X,Y)=(1\pm\varepsilon)p|X||Y|$. We prove that for all $\beta>0$ there is an $\varepsilon>0$ such that an $(\varepsilon,p,1,2)$-pseudorandom graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree at least $\beta pn$ contains the square of a Hamilton cycle. In particular, this implies that $(n,d,\lambda)$-graphs with $\lambda\ll d^{5/2 }n^{-3/2}$ contain the square of a Hamilton cycle, and thus a triangle factor if $n$ is a multiple of $3$. This improves on a result of Krivelevich, Sudakov and Szab\'o [Triangle factors in sparse pseudo-random graphs, Combinatorica 24 (2004), no. 3, 403--426]. We also extend our result to higher powers of Hamilton cycles and establish corresponding counting versions.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figur

Optimal covers with Hamilton cycles in random graphs

A packing of a graph G with Hamilton cycles is a set of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in G. Such packings have been studied intensively and recent results imply that a largest packing of Hamilton cycles in G_n,p a.a.s. has size \lfloor delta(G_n,p) /2 \rfloor. Glebov, Krivelevich and Szab\'o recently initiated research on the `dual' problem, where one asks for a set of Hamilton cycles covering all edges of G. Our main result states that for log^{117}n / n < p < 1-n^{-1/8}, a.a.s. the edges of G_n,p can be covered by \lceil Delta(G_n,p)/2 \rceil Hamilton cycles. This is clearly optimal and improves an approximate result of Glebov, Krivelevich and Szab\'o, which holds for p > n^{-1+\eps}. Our proof is based on a result of Knox, K\"uhn and Osthus on packing Hamilton cycles in pseudorandom graphs.Comment: final version of paper (to appear in Combinatorica

Counting Hamilton cycles in sparse random directed graphs

Let D(n,p) be the random directed graph on n vertices where each of the n(n-1) possible arcs is present independently with probability p. A celebrated result of Frieze shows that if $p\ge(\log n+\omega(1))/n$ then D(n,p) typically has a directed Hamilton cycle, and this is best possible. In this paper, we obtain a strengthening of this result, showing that under the same condition, the number of directed Hamilton cycles in D(n,p) is typically $n!(p(1+o(1)))^{n}$. We also prove a hitting-time version of this statement, showing that in the random directed graph process, as soon as every vertex has in-/out-degrees at least 1, there are typically $n!(\log n/n(1+o(1)))^{n}$ directed Hamilton cycles

Hamilton decompositions of regular expanders: applications

In a recent paper, we showed that every sufficiently large regular digraph G on n vertices whose degree is linear in n and which is a robust outexpander has a decomposition into edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. The main consequence of this theorem is that every regular tournament on n vertices can be decomposed into (n-1)/2 edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles, whenever n is sufficiently large. This verified a conjecture of Kelly from 1968. In this paper, we derive a number of further consequences of our result on robust outexpanders, the main ones are the following: (i) an undirected analogue of our result on robust outexpanders; (ii) best possible bounds on the size of an optimal packing of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in a graph of minimum degree d for a large range of values for d. (iii) a similar result for digraphs of given minimum semidegree; (iv) an approximate version of a conjecture of Nash-Williams on Hamilton decompositions of dense regular graphs; (v) the observation that dense quasi-random graphs are robust outexpanders; (vi) a verification of the `very dense' case of a conjecture of Frieze and Krivelevich on packing edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in random graphs; (vii) a proof of a conjecture of Erdos on the size of an optimal packing of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in a random tournament.Comment: final version, to appear in J. Combinatorial Theory

Embedding large subgraphs into dense graphs

What conditions ensure that a graph G contains some given spanning subgraph H? The most famous examples of results of this kind are probably Dirac's theorem on Hamilton cycles and Tutte's theorem on perfect matchings. Perfect matchings are generalized by perfect F-packings, where instead of covering all the vertices of G by disjoint edges, we want to cover G by disjoint copies of a (small) graph F. It is unlikely that there is a characterization of all graphs G which contain a perfect F-packing, so as in the case of Dirac's theorem it makes sense to study conditions on the minimum degree of G which guarantee a perfect F-packing. The Regularity lemma of Szemeredi and the Blow-up lemma of Komlos, Sarkozy and Szemeredi have proved to be powerful tools in attacking such problems and quite recently, several long-standing problems and conjectures in the area have been solved using these. In this survey, we give an outline of recent progress (with our main emphasis on F-packings, Hamiltonicity problems and tree embeddings) and describe some of the methods involved

Dirac's theorem for random regular graphs

We prove a `resilience' version of Dirac's theorem in the setting of random regular graphs. More precisely, we show that, whenever $d$ is sufficiently large compared to $\varepsilon>0$, a.a.s. the following holds: let $G'$ be any subgraph of the random $n$-vertex $d$-regular graph $G_{n,d}$ with minimum degree at least $(1/2+\varepsilon)d$. Then $G'$ is Hamiltonian. This proves a conjecture of Ben-Shimon, Krivelevich and Sudakov. Our result is best possible: firstly, the condition that $d$ is large cannot be omitted, and secondly, the minimum degree bound cannot be improved.Comment: Final accepted version, to appear in Combinatorics, Probability & Computin