Packings and Coverings of Complete Graphs with a Hole with the 4-Cycle with a Pendant Edge

In this thesis, we consider packings and coverings of various complete graphs with the 4-cycle with a pendant edge. We consider both restricted and unrestricted coverings. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for such structures for (1) complete graphs Kv, (2) complete bipartite graphs Km,n, and (3) complete graphs with a hole K(v,w)

Tremain equiangular tight frames

Equiangular tight frames provide optimal packings of lines through the origin. We combine Steiner triple systems with Hadamard matrices to produce a new infinite family of equiangular tight frames. This in turn leads to new constructions of strongly regular graphs and distance-regular antipodal covers of the complete graph.Comment: 11 page

Tremain Equiangular Tight Frames

Equiangular tight frames provide optimal packings of lines through the origin. We combine Steiner triple systems with Hadamard matrices to produce a new infinite family of equiangular tight frames. This in turn leads to new constructions of strongly regular graphs and distance-regular antipodal covers of the complete graph

Perfect packings with complete graphs minus an edge

Let K_r^- denote the graph obtained from K_r by deleting one edge. We show that for every integer r\ge 4 there exists an integer n_0=n_0(r) such that every graph G whose order n\ge n_0 is divisible by r and whose minimum degree is at least (1-1/chi_{cr}(K_r^-))n contains a perfect K_r^- packing, i.e. a collection of disjoint copies of K_r^- which covers all vertices of G. Here chi_{cr}(K_r^-)=r(r-2)/(r-1) is the critical chromatic number of K_r^-. The bound on the minimum degree is best possible and confirms a conjecture of Kawarabayashi for large n

An Ore-type theorem for perfect packings in graphs

We say that a graph G has a perfect H-packing (also called an H-factor) if there exists a set of disjoint copies of H in G which together cover all the vertices of G. Given a graph H, we determine, asymptotically, the Ore-type degree condition which ensures that a graph G has a perfect H-packing. More precisely, let \delta_{\rm Ore} (H,n) be the smallest number k such that every graph G whose order n is divisible by |H| and with d(x)+d(y)\geq k for all non-adjacent x \not = y \in V(G) contains a perfect H-packing. We determine \lim_{n\to \infty} \delta_{\rm Ore} (H,n)/n.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure. Extra examples and a sketch proof of Theorem 4 added. To appear in the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematic

Mathematical optimization for packing problems

During the last few years several new results on packing problems were obtained using a blend of tools from semidefinite optimization, polynomial optimization, and harmonic analysis. We survey some of these results and the techniques involved, concentrating on geometric packing problems such as the sphere-packing problem or the problem of packing regular tetrahedra in R^3.Comment: 17 pages, written for the SIAG/OPT Views-and-News, (v2) some updates and correction