Hamiltonian-connectedness of triangulations with few separating triangles

We prove that 3-connected plane triangulations containing a single edge contained in all separating triangles are hamiltonian-connected. As a direct corollary we have that 3-connected plane triangulations with at most one separating triangle are hamiltonian-connected. In order to show bounds on the strongest form of this theorem, we proved that for any s >= 4 there are 3-connected triangulation with s separating triangles that are not hamiltonian-connected. We also present computational results which show that all `small' 3-connected triangulations with at most 3 separating triangles are hamiltonian-connected

Hamiltonian cycles and 1-factors in 5-regular graphs

It is proven that for any integer $g \ge 0$ and $k \in \{ 0, \ldots, 10 \}$, there exist infinitely many 5-regular graphs of genus $g$ containing a 1-factorisation with exactly $k$ pairs of 1-factors that are perfect, i.e. form a hamiltonian cycle. For $g = 0$, this settles a problem of Kotzig from 1964. Motivated by Kotzig and Labelle's "marriage" operation, we discuss two gluing techniques aimed at producing graphs of high cyclic edge-connectivity. We prove that there exist infinitely many planar 5-connected 5-regular graphs in which every 1-factorisation has zero perfect pairs. On the other hand, by the Four Colour Theorem and a result of Brinkmann and the first author, every planar 4-connected 5-regular graph satisfying a condition on its hamiltonian cycles has a linear number of 1-factorisations each containing at least one perfect pair. We also prove that every planar 5-connected 5-regular graph satisfying a stronger condition contains a 1-factorisation with at most nine perfect pairs, whence, every such graph admitting a 1-factorisation with ten perfect pairs has at least two edge-Kempe equivalence classes. The paper concludes with further results on edge-Kempe equivalence classes in planar 5-regular graphs.Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures; corrected figure

On the genera of polyhedral embeddings of cubic graph

In this article we present theoretical and computational results on the existence of polyhedral embeddings of graphs. The emphasis is on cubic graphs. We also describe an efficient algorithm to compute all polyhedral embeddings of a given cubic graph and constructions for cubic graphs with some special properties of their polyhedral embeddings. Some key results are that even cubic graphs with a polyhedral embedding on the torus can also have polyhedral embeddings in arbitrarily high genus, in fact in a genus {\em close} to the theoretical maximum for that number of vertices, and that there is no bound on the number of genera in which a cubic graph can have a polyhedral embedding. While these results suggest a large variety of polyhedral embeddings, computations for up to 28 vertices suggest that by far most of the cubic graphs do not have a polyhedral embedding in any genus and that the ratio of these graphs is increasing with the number of vertices.Comment: The C-program implementing the algorithm described in this article can be obtained from any of the author

10-Gabriel graphs are Hamiltonian

Given a set $S$ of points in the plane, the $k$-Gabriel graph of $S$ is the geometric graph with vertex set $S$, where $p_i,p_j\in S$ are connected by an edge if and only if the closed disk having segment $\bar{p_ip_j}$ as diameter contains at most $k$ points of $S \setminus \{p_i,p_j\}$. We consider the following question: What is the minimum value of $k$ such that the $k$-Gabriel graph of every point set $S$ contains a Hamiltonian cycle? For this value, we give an upper bound of 10 and a lower bound of 2. The best previously known values were 15 and 1, respectively

Forcing Independence

An independent set in a graph is a set of vertices which are pairwise non-adjacent. An independ-ent set of vertices F is a forcing independent set if there is a unique maximum independent set I such that F ⊆ I. The forcing independence number or forcing number of a maximum independent set I is the cardi-nality of a minimum forcing set for I. The forcing number f of a graph is the minimum cardinality of the forcing numbers for the maximum independent sets of the graph. The possible values of f are determined and characterized. We investigate connections between these concepts, other structural concepts, and chemical applications. (doi: 10.5562/cca2295

On the minimum leaf number of cubic graphs

The \emph{minimum leaf number} $\hbox{ml} (G)$ of a connected graph $G$ is defined as the minimum number of leaves of the spanning trees of $G$. We present new results concerning the minimum leaf number of cubic graphs: we show that if $G$ is a connected cubic graph of order $n$, then $\mathrm{ml}(G) \leq \frac{n}6 + \frac13$, improving on the best known result in [Inf. Process. Lett. 105 (2008) 164-169] and proving the conjecture in [Electron. J. Graph Theory and Applications 5 (2017) 207-211]. We further prove that if $G$ is also 2-connected, then $\mathrm{ml}(G) \leq \frac{n}{6.53}$, improving on the best known bound in [Math. Program., Ser. A 144 (2014) 227-245]. We also present new conjectures concerning the minimum leaf number of several types of cubic graphs and examples showing that the bounds of the conjectures are best possible.Comment: 17 page