A new improvement to the Overfull Conjecture
Combinatorics
2025-12-09 v1
Abstract
Let be a simple graph with order , maximum degree , minimum degree and chromatic index , respectively. A graph is called {\em -critical} if and for every proper subgraph of , and is overfull if . In 1986, Chetwynd and Hilton proposed the Overfull Conjecture: Every -critical graph with is overfull. The Overfull Conjecture has many implications, such as that it implies a polynomial-time algorithm for determining the chromatic index of graphs with , and implies several longstanding conjectures in the area of graph edge coloring. Recently, Cao, Chen, Jing and Shan (SIAM J. Discrete Math. 2022) verified the Overfull Conjecture for . In this paper, we improve it for .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.07044,
title = {A new improvement to the Overfull Conjecture},
author = {Xuli Qi and Chunhui Ge and Yanrui Feng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.07044},
year = {2025}
}