Note On Vertex-Disjoint Cycles
Note On Vertex-Disjoint Cycles
Note On Vertex-Disjoint Cycles
Jacques Verstraete
Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics
Centre for Mathematical Sciences
Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 OWB
England. November 1999.
[email protected]
Abstract
H
aggkvist and Scott asked whether one can find a quadratic function q(k) such that if G is a graph of minimum degree at least
q(k), then G contains vertex-disjoint cycles of k consecutive even
lengths. In this paper, it is shown that if G is a graph of average
degree at least k 2 + 19k + 12 and sufficiently many vertices, then
G contains vertex-disjoint cycles of k consecutive even lengths, answering the above question in the affirmative. The coefficient of k 2
cannot be decreased and, in this sense, this result is best possible.
All graphs considered in this paper are simple and finite. Throughout
this paper, Ks,t denotes the complete bipartite graph with s vertices in one
colour class and t vertices in the other. Also, |H| denotes the order of a
graph H and e(H) denotes the number of edges in H. The word disjoint
will be taken to imply vertex-disjoint.
It is well-known that a graph of average degree at least two contains
at least one cycle. From this it is easy to deduce that if k is a natural
number, a graph of order n containing at least n + k 1 edges contains
k distinct cycles. Corradi and Hajnal [3] considered the requirement that
the k cycles be disjoint. They proved that a graph of minimum degree at
least 2k and order at least 3k contains k disjoint cycles. Under the same
minimum degree condition, Egawa [4] showed that a graph of order at least
17k + o(k) contains k disjoint cycles of the same length.
1
vA
1
ss+1
1
ss+1
d(v)
s
d(v)s
vA
|A|s1
vA
!s
d(v)
1
e(G)s
|A|s1
1
1
s+1
ss |A|s
s
|A|s1
|B|
.
|A|/s > t|B|s t
s
ss+1
4
1
4kn1+ r .
e(B)
By Lemma 3, applied to B, there exists a subgraph H of B of average degree at least 4k and radius at most r (log2 n)2 . By Theorem 1, H (and
therefore G0 ) contains cycles of k consecutive even lengths, the shortest of
which has length at most 2(log2 n)2 . This shows that r0 (log2 n)2 . Conversely, whenever Gi does not contain cycles of k consecutive even lengths,
the shortest having length at most 2(log2 n)2 , Gi has average degree at most
16k + 8.
As G is finite, there exists a non-negative integer j such that rj
(log2 n)2 and Gj+1 does not contain cycles of k consecutive even lengths,
the shortest having length at most 2(log2 n)2 . Let G0 = Gj+1 and G00 =
G V (G0 ). Noting that |Xi | 2k(ri + k 2) and that no k of the integers
ri are identical,
|G00 |
j
X
|Xi |
i=0
(k 1)
r
X
2k(i + k 2)
i=0
1 2
(k + 19k + 12)n
2
1 2
(k + 19k + 12)n
2
1 2
(k + 3k + 4)n n
2
1 2
(k + 3k + 2)n.
2
1
(16k + 8)|G0 | e(G00 )
2
1
(16k + 8)n |G00 |2
2
m h + e(H) 1
.
e(H) 1
Let G = G0 and define G1 = G0 V (H0 ) where H0 is a smallest topological H appearing in G. By Theorem 5, with = (log2 n)1 , we can
6
|G |
m h + e(H) 1
(k 1)m
e(H) 1
By the definition of G00 and Theorem 5, e(G0 ) < 24h |G0 |. The number of
edges in the bipartite graph B, spanned by the edges with one end in G0 and
2
2
the other end in G00 , is therefore at least 12 (4h +1 +2kh44h )|G0 | kh|G0 |.
Applying Lemma 4 to B with s = kh and t = ke(H), we deduce that
B contains Kkh,ke(H) . This complete bipartite graph contains k disjoint
isomorphic topological H, in which every edge of H is subdivided precisely
once.
2
The expression 4h +1 + 2kh + 1 in the statement of the above theorem
is probably not best possible. Deep theorems of Bollob
as and Thomason [1]
and Koml
os and Szemeredi [8] show that a graph of average degree ch2 , for
some absolute contant c > 0, contains a topological complete graph of order
h. It may be true that for a different value of c, we even get a pair of disjoint
isomorphic topological complete graphs of order h.
It is not hard to see that the lower bound on n in the theorem can
be improved. To obtain k vertex disjoint isomorphic topological H in a
bipartite graph, we need only that it contain a large number of vertex disjoint
complete bipartite graph rather than one large complete bipartite graph.
The following Lemma makes this more precise:
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covering vertices. Let H be a fixed graph. We let f (r, H) denote the maximum proportion of vertices that can be covered with disjoint topological H
in any r-regular graph. We define
Observe that 1/2 f (H) f+ (H) 1 for every H. The lower bound
follows by removing topological H from an r-regular graph G until we obtain
a graph F containing no topological H. Then the average degree of F is
bounded above by a constant c > 0 depending only on H, by the results
of Mader [10]. As G is r-regular, the number of edges between F and the
remainder of G is at most r(|G| |F |), but at least (r c)|F |. Therefore
|F | 12 (1 rc )1 |G| and hence f (H) 21 .
When H is a complete graph of order two or three, the problem above
becomes the problem of covering with paths or cycles respectively. Petersens
2-factor theorem (see [9] page 54) states that for k 1, every 2k-regular
graph contains a 2-factor. This shows that if H has order at most three, then
f+ (H) = 1. The author does not know of any graph H for which f (H) < 1
or f (H) < f+ (H); this problem may prove to be very interesting.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Andrew Thomason and the referee for their invaluable suggestions and comments.
References
[1] Bollob
as, B, Thomason, A. Proof of a conjecture of Mader, Erd
os and
Hajnal on topological complete subgraphs, Europ. J. Combin. 19 (8)
(1988) 883887.
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