English

Closing paths to cycles in symmetric graphs

Combinatorics 2025-10-08 v1

Abstract

It was shown by Beisegel, Chudnovsky, Gurvich, Milani\v{c}, and Servatius in 2022 that every induced 22-edge path in a vertex-transitive graph closes to an induced cycle. Similar results were obtained for 3-edge paths closing to cycles in edge-transitive graphs, where the cycle can be assumed to be induced if the path is induced. Motivated by these results, we consider the following problem: For a given class of graphs, determine all integers 0\ell\geq 0 such that for every graph in the class, every path of length at most \ell closes to a cycle. We also consider the variant of the problem for induced paths closing to induced cycles. We completely solve these problems for the classes of (finite) vertex-transitive graphs, edge-transitive graphs, and edge-transitive graphs that are not stars. For all but one case of a negative answer, we provide infinite families of connected counterexamples.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.05404,
  title  = {Closing paths to cycles in symmetric graphs},
  author = {Martin Milanič and Đorđe Mitrović},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.05404},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:20:14.551Z