Small cycles, generalized prisms and Hamiltonian cycles in the Bubble-sort graph

The Bubble-sort graph $BS_n,\,n\geqslant 2$, is a Cayley graph over the symmetric group $Sym_n$ generated by transpositions from the set $\{(1 2), (2 3),\ldots, (n-1 n)\}$. It is a bipartite graph containing all even cycles of length $\ell$, where $4\leqslant \ell\leqslant n!$. We give an explicit combinatorial characterization of all its $4$- and $6$-cycles. Based on this characterization, we define generalized prisms in $BS_n,\,n\geqslant 5$, and present a new approach to construct a Hamiltonian cycle based on these generalized prisms.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Families of graph-different Hamilton paths

Let D be an arbitrary subset of the natural numbers. For every n, let M(n;D) be the maximum of the cardinality of a set of Hamiltonian paths in the complete graph K_n such that the union of any two paths from the family contains a not necessarily induced cycle of some length from D. We determine or bound the asymptotics of M(n;D) in various special cases. This problem is closely related to that of the permutation capacity of graphs and constitutes a further extension of the problem area around Shannon capacity. We also discuss how to generalize our cycle-difference problems and present an example where cycles are replaced by 4-cliques. These problems are in a natural duality to those of graph intersection, initiated by Erd\"os, Simonovits and S\'os. The lack of kernel structure as a natural candidate for optimum makes our problems quite challenging

Properly coloured copies and rainbow copies of large graphs with small maximum degree

Let G be a graph on n vertices with maximum degree D. We use the Lov\'asz local lemma to show the following two results about colourings c of the edges of the complete graph K_n. If for each vertex v of K_n the colouring c assigns each colour to at most (n-2)/22.4D^2 edges emanating from v, then there is a copy of G in K_n which is properly edge-coloured by c. This improves on a result of Alon, Jiang, Miller, and Pritikin [Random Struct. Algorithms 23(4), 409-433, 2003]. On the other hand, if c assigns each colour to at most n/51D^2 edges of K_n, then there is a copy of G in K_n such that each edge of G receives a different colour from c. This proves a conjecture of Frieze and Krivelevich [Electron. J. Comb. 15(1), R59, 2008]. Our proofs rely on a framework developed by Lu and Sz\'ekely [Electron. J. Comb. 14(1), R63, 2007] for applying the local lemma to random injections. In order to improve the constants in our results we use a version of the local lemma due to Bissacot, Fern\'andez, Procacci, and Scoppola [preprint, arXiv:0910.1824].Comment: 9 page

Finding long cycles in graphs

We analyze the problem of discovering long cycles inside a graph. We propose and test two algorithms for this task. The first one is based on recent advances in statistical mechanics and relies on a message passing procedure. The second follows a more standard Monte Carlo Markov Chain strategy. Special attention is devoted to Hamiltonian cycles of (non-regular) random graphs of minimal connectivity equal to three

Bounded colorings of multipartite graphs and hypergraphs

Let $c$ be an edge-coloring of the complete $n$-vertex graph $K_n$. The problem of finding properly colored and rainbow Hamilton cycles in $c$ was initiated in 1976 by Bollob\'as and Erd\H os and has been extensively studied since then. Recently it was extended to the hypergraph setting by Dudek, Frieze and Ruci\'nski. We generalize these results, giving sufficient local (resp. global) restrictions on the colorings which guarantee a properly colored (resp. rainbow) copy of a given hypergraph $G$. We also study multipartite analogues of these questions. We give (up to a constant factor) optimal sufficient conditions for a coloring $c$ of the complete balanced $m$-partite graph to contain a properly colored or rainbow copy of a given graph $G$ with maximum degree $\Delta$. Our bounds exhibit a surprising transition in the rate of growth, showing that the problem is fundamentally different in the regimes $\Delta \gg m$ and $\Delta \ll m$ Our main tool is the framework of Lu and Sz\'ekely for the space of random bijections, which we extend to product spaces