An exploration of two infinite families of snarks

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019In this paper, we generalize a single example of a snark that admits a drawing with even rotational symmetry into two infinite families using a voltage graph construction techniques derived from cyclic Pseudo-Loupekine snarks. We expose an enforced chirality in coloring the underlying 5-pole that generated the known example, and use this fact to show that the infinite families are in fact snarks. We explore the construction of these families in terms of the blowup construction. We show that a graph in either family with rotational symmetry of order m has automorphism group of order m2m⁺¹. The oddness of graphs in both families is determined exactly, and shown to increase linearly with the order of rotational symmetry.Chapter 1: Introduction -- 1.1 General Graph Theory -- Chapter 2: Introduction to Snarks -- 2.1 History -- 2.2 Motivation -- 2.3 Loupekine Snarks and k-poles -- 2.4 Conditions on Triviality -- Chapter 3: The Construction of Two Families of Snarks -- 3.1 Voltage Graphs and Lifts -- 3.2 The Family of Snarks, Fm -- 3.3 A Second Family of Snarks, Rm -- Chapter 4: Results -- 4.1 Proof that the graphs Fm and Rm are Snarks -- 4.2 Interpreting Fm and Rm as Blowup Graphs -- 4.3 Automorphism Group -- 4.4 Oddness -- Chapter 5: Conclusions and Open Questions -- References

Normal 6-edge-colorings of some bridgeless cubic graphs

In an edge-coloring of a cubic graph, an edge is poor or rich, if the set of colors assigned to the edge and the four edges adjacent it, has exactly five or exactly three distinct colors, respectively. An edge is normal in an edge-coloring if it is rich or poor in this coloring. A normal $k$-edge-coloring of a cubic graph is an edge-coloring with $k$ colors such that each edge of the graph is normal. We denote by $\chi'_{N}(G)$ the smallest $k$, for which $G$ admits a normal $k$-edge-coloring. Normal edge-colorings were introduced by Jaeger in order to study his well-known Petersen Coloring Conjecture. It is known that proving $\chi'_{N}(G)\leq 5$ for every bridgeless cubic graph is equivalent to proving Petersen Coloring Conjecture. Moreover, Jaeger was able to show that it implies classical conjectures like Cycle Double Cover Conjecture and Berge-Fulkerson Conjecture. Recently, two of the authors were able to show that any simple cubic graph admits a normal $7$-edge-coloring, and this result is best possible. In the present paper, we show that any claw-free bridgeless cubic graph, permutation snark, tree-like snark admits a normal $6$-edge-coloring. Finally, we show that any bridgeless cubic graph $G$ admits a $6$-edge-coloring such that at least $\frac{7}{9}\cdot |E|$ edges of $G$ are normal.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1804.0944

Normal 5-edge-coloring of some snarks superpositioned by Flower snarks

An edge e is normal in a proper edge-coloring of a cubic graph G if the number of distinct colors on four edges incident to e is 2 or 4: A normal edge-coloring of G is a proper edge-coloring in which every edge of G is normal. The Petersen Coloring Conjecture is equivalent to stating that every bridgeless cubic graph has a normal 5-edge-coloring. Since every 3-edge-coloring of a cubic graph is trivially normal, it is suficient to consider only snarks to establish the conjecture. In this paper, we consider a class of superpositioned snarks obtained by choosing a cycle C in a snark G and superpositioning vertices of C by one of two simple supervertices and edges of C by superedges Hx;y, where H is any snark and x; y any pair of nonadjacent vertices of H: For such superpositioned snarks, two suficient conditions are given for the existence of a normal 5-edge-coloring. The first condition yields a normal 5-edge-coloring for all hypohamiltonian snarks used as superedges, but only for some of the possible ways of connecting them. In particular, since the Flower snarks are hypohamiltonian, this consequently yields a normal 5-edge-coloring for many snarks superpositioned by the Flower snarks. The second sufficient condition is more demanding, but its application yields a normal 5-edge-colorings for all superpositions by the Flower snarks. The same class of snarks is considered in [S. Liu, R.-X. Hao, C.-Q. Zhang, Berge{Fulkerson coloring for some families of superposition snarks, Eur. J. Comb. 96 (2021) 103344] for the Berge-Fulkerson conjecture. Since we established that this class has a Petersen coloring, this immediately yields the result of the above mentioned paper.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figure

Normal 5-edge coloring of some more snarks superpositioned by the Petersen graph

A normal 5-edge-coloring of a cubic graph is a coloring such that for every edge the number of distinct colors incident to its end-vertices is 3 or 5 (and not 4). The well known Petersen Coloring Conjecture is equivalent to the statement that every bridgeless cubic graph has a normal 5-edge-coloring. All 3-edge-colorings of a cubic graph are obviously normal, so in order to establish the conjecture it is sufficient to consider only snarks. In our previous paper [J. Sedlar, R. \v{S}krekovski, Normal 5-edge-coloring of some snarks superpositioned by the Petersen graph, Applied Mathematics and Computation 467 (2024) 128493], we considered superpositions of any snark G along a cycle C by two simple supervertices and by the superedge obtained from the Petersen graph, but only for some of the possible ways of connecting supervertices and superedges. The present paper is a continuation of that paper, herein we consider superpositions by the Petersen graph for all the remaining connections and establish that for all of them the Petersen Coloring Conjecture holds.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure

A remarkable Osijeker and his graph

This is an excerpt of The Colloquium Lecture devoted to late Professor Danilo Blanuša (born in Osijek), his results in [3], and later impact of [3] to graph theory

Snarks with total chromatic number 5

A k-total-coloring of G is an assignment of k colors to the edges and vertices of G, so that adjacent and incident elements have different colors. The total chromatic number of G, denoted by chi(T)(G), is the least k for which G has a k-total-coloring. It was proved by Rosenfeld that the total chromatic number of a cubic graph is either 4 or 5. Cubic graphs with chi(T) = 4 are said to be Type 1, and cubic graphs with chi(T) = 5 are said to be Type 2. Snarks are cyclically 4-edge-connected cubic graphs that do not allow a 3-edge-coloring. In 2003, Cavicchioli et al. asked for a Type 2 snark with girth at least 5. As neither Type 2 cubic graphs with girth at least 5 nor Type 2 snarks are known, this is taking two steps at once, and the two requirements of being a snark and having girth at least 5 should better be treated independently. In this paper we will show that the property of being a snark can be combined with being Type 2. We will give a construction that gives Type 2 snarks for each even vertex number n >= 40. We will also give the result of a computer search showing that among all Type 2 cubic graphs on up to 32 vertices, all but three contain an induced chordless cycle of length 4. These three exceptions contain triangles. The question of the existence of a Type 2 cubic graph with girth at least 5 remains open