Hamilton cycles in sparse robustly expanding digraphs

The notion of robust expansion has played a central role in the solution of several conjectures involving the packing of Hamilton cycles in graphs and directed graphs. These and other results usually rely on the fact that every robustly expanding (di)graph with suitably large minimum degree contains a Hamilton cycle. Previous proofs of this require Szemer\'edi's Regularity Lemma and so this fact can only be applied to dense, sufficiently large robust expanders. We give a proof that does not use the Regularity Lemma and, indeed, we can apply our result to suitable sparse robustly expanding digraphs.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Electronic Journal of Combinatoric

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

Resilient degree sequences with respect to Hamilton cycles and matchings in random graphs

P\'osa's theorem states that any graph $G$ whose degree sequence $d_1 \le \ldots \le d_n$ satisfies $d_i \ge i+1$ for all $i < n/2$ has a Hamilton cycle. This degree condition is best possible. We show that a similar result holds for suitable subgraphs $G$ of random graphs, i.e. we prove a `resilience version' of P\'osa's theorem: if $pn \ge C \log n$ and the $i$-th vertex degree (ordered increasingly) of $G \subseteq G_{n,p}$ is at least $(i+o(n))p$ for all $i<n/2$, then $G$ has a Hamilton cycle. This is essentially best possible and strengthens a resilience version of Dirac's theorem obtained by Lee and Sudakov. Chv\'atal's theorem generalises P\'osa's theorem and characterises all degree sequences which ensure the existence of a Hamilton cycle. We show that a natural guess for a resilience version of Chv\'atal's theorem fails to be true. We formulate a conjecture which would repair this guess, and show that the corresponding degree conditions ensure the existence of a perfect matching in any subgraph of $G_{n,p}$ which satisfies these conditions. This provides an asymptotic characterisation of all degree sequences which resiliently guarantee the existence of a perfect matching.Comment: To appear in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics. This version corrects a couple of typo

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

Hamilton cycles in dense vertex-transitive graphs

A famous conjecture of Lov\'asz states that every connected vertex-transitive graph contains a Hamilton path. In this article we confirm the conjecture in the case that the graph is dense and sufficiently large. In fact, we show that such graphs contain a Hamilton cycle and moreover we provide a polynomial time algorithm for finding such a cycle.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures; referees' comments incorporated; accepted for publication in Journal of Combinatorial Theory, series

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