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Beyond the Pseudoforest Strong Nine Dragon Tree Theorem

Combinatorics 2025-06-23 v2

Abstract

The pseudoforest version of the Strong Nine Dragon Tree Conjecture states that if a graph GG has maximum average degree mad(G)=2maxHGe(G)v(G)\text{mad}(G) = 2 \max_{H \subseteq G} \frac{e(G)}{v(G)} at most 2(k+dk+d+1)2(k + \frac{d}{k+d+1}), then it has a decomposition into k+1k+1 pseudoforests where in one pseudoforest FF the components of FF have at most dd edges. This was proven in 2020. We strengthen this theorem by showing that we can find such a decomposition where additionally FF is acyclic, the diameter of the components of FF is at most 2+22\ell + 2, where =d1k+1\ell = \lfloor\frac{d-1}{k+1} \rfloor, and at most 2+12\ell + 1 if d1modk+1d \equiv 1 \bmod k+1. Furthermore, for any component KK of FF and any zNz \in \mathbb N, we have diam(K)2zdiam(K) \leq 2z if e(K)dz(k1)+1e(K) \geq d - z(k-1) + 1. We also show that both diameter bounds are best possible as an extension for both the Strong Nine Dragon Tree Conjecture for pseudoforests and its original conjecture for forests. In fact, they are still optimal even if we only enforce FF to have any constant maximum degree, instead of enforcing every component of FF to have at most dd edges.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.00931,
  title  = {Beyond the Pseudoforest Strong Nine Dragon Tree Theorem},
  author = {Sebastian Mies and Benjamin Moore and Evelyne Smith-Roberge},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.00931},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

29 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:37:54.690Z