2-factors with k cycles in Hamiltonian graphs

A well known generalisation of Dirac's theorem states that if a graph $G$ on $n\ge 4k$ vertices has minimum degree at least $n/2$ then $G$ contains a $2$-factor consisting of exactly $k$ cycles. This is easily seen to be tight in terms of the bound on the minimum degree. However, if one assumes in addition that $G$ is Hamiltonian it has been conjectured that the bound on the minimum degree may be relaxed. This was indeed shown to be true by S\'ark\"ozy. In subsequent papers, the minimum degree bound has been improved, most recently to $(2/5+\varepsilon)n$ by DeBiasio, Ferrara, and Morris. On the other hand no lower bounds close to this are known, and all papers on this topic ask whether the minimum degree needs to be linear. We answer this question, by showing that the required minimum degree for large Hamiltonian graphs to have a $2$-factor consisting of a fixed number of cycles is sublinear in $n.$Comment: 13 pages, 6 picture

A counterexample to Stein's Equi-n-square conjecture

In 1975 Stein conjectured that in every n × n array filled with the numbers 1,...,n with every number occuring exactly n times, there is a partial transversal of size n − 1. In this note we show that this conjecture is false by constructing such arrays without partial transverals of size n−(1/42)ln(n)

Linearly many rainbow trees in properly edge-coloured complete graphs

A subgraph of an edge-coloured complete graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. The study of rainbow decompositions has a long history, going back to the work of Euler on Latin squares. In this paper we discuss three problems about decomposing complete graphs into rainbow trees: the Brualdi-Hollingsworth Conjecture, Constantine’s Conjecture, and the Kaneko-Kano-Suzuki Conjecture. We show that in every proper edge-colouring of Kn there are 10−6n edge-disjoint spanning isomorphic rainbow trees. This simultaneously improves the best known bounds on all these conjectures. Using our method we also show that every properly (n − 1)-edge-coloured Kn has n/9 − 6 edge-disjoint rainbow trees, giving further improvement on the Brualdi-Hollingsworth Conjecture

C4-free subgraphs with large average degree

Motivated by a longstanding conjecture of Thomassen, we study how large the average degree of a graph needs to be to imply that it contains a $C_4$-free subgraph with average degree at least $t$. K\"uhn and Osthus showed that an average degree bound which is double exponential in t is sufficient. We give a short proof of this bound, before reducing it to a single exponential. That is, we show that any graph $G$ with average degree at least $2^{ct^2\log t}$ (for some constant $c>0$) contains a $C_4$-free subgraph with average degree at least $t$. Finally, we give a construction which improves the lower bound for this problem, showing that this initial average degree must be at least $t^{3-o(1)}$

A proof of Ringel's Conjecture

A typical decomposition question asks whether the edges of some graph $G$ can be partitioned into disjoint copies of another graph $H$. One of the oldest and best known conjectures in this area, posed by Ringel in 1963, concerns the decomposition of complete graphs into edge-disjoint copies of a tree. It says that any tree with $n$ edges packs $2n+1$ times into the complete graph $K_{2n+1}$. In this paper, we prove this conjecture for large $n$.Comment: 37 pages, 4 figure

Random subgraphs of properly edge-coloured complete graphs and long rainbow cycles

A subgraph of an edge-coloured complete graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. In 1980 Hahn conjectured that every properly edge-coloured complete graph Kn has a rainbow Hamiltonian path. Although this conjecture turned out to be false, it was widely believed that such a colouring always contains a rainbow cycle of length almost n. In this paper, improving on several earlier results, we confirm this by proving that every properly edge-coloured Kn has a rainbow cycle of length n − O(n 3/4 ). One of the main ingredients of our proof, which is of independent interest, shows that the subgraph of a properly edge-coloured Kn formed by the edges a random set of colours has a similar edge distribution as a truly random graph with the same edge density. In particular it has very good expansion properties