English

A combinatorial property of flows on a cycle

Combinatorics 2018-08-31 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we prove a combinatorial property of flows on a cycle. C(V,E)C(V,E) is an undirected cycle with two commodities: {s1,t1},{s2,t2}\{s_{1},t_{1}\}, \{s_{2},t_{2}\};r1>0,r2>0,r=(ri)i=1,2r_1>0,r_2>0, \mathbf r=(r_i)_{i=1,2} and f,ff,f' are both feasible flows for (C,(si,ti)i=1,2,r)(C,(s_i,t_i)_{i=1,2},\mathbf r). Then i{1,2},pPi,f(p)>0,ep,f(e)f(e)\exists i\in\{1,2\}, p\in P_i, f(p)>0, \forall e\in p, f(e)\geq f'(e) ; Here for each i{1,2}i\in\{1,2\}, let PiP_i be the set of sis_i-tit_i paths in CC and P=i=1,2PiP=\cup_{i=1,2}P_i. This means given a two-commodity instance on a cycle, any two distinct network flow ff and ff', compared with ff', ff can't decrease every path's flow amount at the same time. This combinatorial property is a generalization from single-commodity case to two-commodity case, and we also give an instance to illustrate the combinatorial property doesn't hold on for kk-commodity case when k3k\geq 3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.10119,
  title  = {A combinatorial property of flows on a cycle},
  author = {Zhuo Diao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.10119},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:48:45.224Z