English

Decomposing a signed graph into rooted circuits

Combinatorics 2025-06-10 v3

Abstract

We prove a precise min-max theorem for the following problem. Let GG be an Eulerian graph with a specified set of edges SE(G)S \subseteq E(G), and let bb be a vertex of GG. Then what is the maximum integer kk so that the edge-set of GG can be partitioned into kk non-zero bb-trails? That is, each trail must begin and end at bb and contain an odd number of edges from~SS. This theorem is motivated by a connection to vertex-minors and yields two conjectures of M\'{a}\v{c}ajov\'{a} and \v{S}koviera as corollaries.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.01456,
  title  = {Decomposing a signed graph into rooted circuits},
  author = {Rose McCarty},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.01456},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages, 9 figures. The new version contains a correction to Lemma 3.2

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:46:53.140Z