1,520 research outputs found
Resolution of the Oberwolfach problem
The Oberwolfach problem, posed by Ringel in 1967, asks for a decomposition of
into edge-disjoint copies of a given -factor. We show that this
can be achieved for all large . We actually prove a significantly more
general result, which allows for decompositions into more general types of
factors. In particular, this also resolves the Hamilton-Waterloo problem for
large .Comment: 28 page
Solving weighted and counting variants of connectivity problems parameterized by treewidth deterministically in single exponential time
It is well known that many local graph problems, like Vertex Cover and
Dominating Set, can be solved in 2^{O(tw)}|V|^{O(1)} time for graphs G=(V,E)
with a given tree decomposition of width tw. However, for nonlocal problems,
like the fundamental class of connectivity problems, for a long time we did not
know how to do this faster than tw^{O(tw)}|V|^{O(1)}. Recently, Cygan et al.
(FOCS 2011) presented Monte Carlo algorithms for a wide range of connectivity
problems running in time $c^{tw}|V|^{O(1)} for a small constant c, e.g., for
Hamiltonian Cycle and Steiner tree. Naturally, this raises the question whether
randomization is necessary to achieve this runtime; furthermore, it is
desirable to also solve counting and weighted versions (the latter without
incurring a pseudo-polynomial cost in terms of the weights).
We present two new approaches rooted in linear algebra, based on matrix rank
and determinants, which provide deterministic c^{tw}|V|^{O(1)} time algorithms,
also for weighted and counting versions. For example, in this time we can solve
the traveling salesman problem or count the number of Hamiltonian cycles. The
rank-based ideas provide a rather general approach for speeding up even
straightforward dynamic programming formulations by identifying "small" sets of
representative partial solutions; we focus on the case of expressing
connectivity via sets of partitions, but the essential ideas should have
further applications. The determinant-based approach uses the matrix tree
theorem for deriving closed formulas for counting versions of connectivity
problems; we show how to evaluate those formulas via dynamic programming.Comment: 36 page
Hamilton decompositions of regular expanders: a proof of Kelly's conjecture for large tournaments
A long-standing conjecture of Kelly states that every regular tournament on n
vertices can be decomposed into (n-1)/2 edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. We prove
this conjecture for large n. In fact, we prove a far more general result, based
on our recent concept of robust expansion and a new method for decomposing
graphs. We show 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. This enables us to obtain
numerous further results, e.g. as a special case we confirm a conjecture of
Erdos on packing Hamilton cycles in random tournaments. As corollaries to the
main result, we also obtain several results on packing Hamilton cycles in
undirected graphs, giving e.g. the best known result on a conjecture of
Nash-Williams. We also apply our result to solve a problem on the domination
ratio of the Asymmetric Travelling Salesman problem, which was raised e.g. by
Glover and Punnen as well as Alon, Gutin and Krivelevich.Comment: new version includes a standalone version of the `robust
decomposition lemma' for application in subsequent paper
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
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