English

Decompositions of complete graphs into cycles of arbitrary lengths

Combinatorics 2018-05-16 v4

Abstract

We show that the complete graph on nn vertices can be decomposed into tt cycles of specified lengths m1,,mtm_1,\ldots,m_t if and only if nn is odd, 3min3\leq m_i\leq n for i=1,,ti=1,\ldots,t, and m1++mt=(n2)m_1+\cdots+m_t=\binom n2. We also show that the complete graph on nn vertices can be decomposed into a perfect matching and tt cycles of specified lengths m1,,mtm_1,\ldots,m_t if and only if nn is even, 3min3\leq m_i\leq n for i=1,,ti=1,\ldots,t, and m1++mt=(n2)n2m_1+\ldots+m_t=\binom n2-\frac n2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1204.3709,
  title  = {Decompositions of complete graphs into cycles of arbitrary lengths},
  author = {Darryn Bryant and Daniel Horsley and William Pettersson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1204.3709},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

182 pages, 0 figures, A condensed version of this paper was published as "Cycle decompositions V: Complete graphs into cycles of arbitrary lengths" (see reference [24]). Here, we include supplementary data and some proofs which were omitted from that paper