English

Decompositions of complete uniform hypergraphs into Hamilton Berge cycles

Combinatorics 2014-04-01 v1

Abstract

In 1973 Bermond, Germa, Heydemann and Sotteau conjectured that if nn divides (nk)\binom{n}{k}, then the complete kk-uniform hypergraph on nn vertices has a decomposition into Hamilton Berge cycles. Here a Berge cycle consists of an alternating sequence v1,e1,v2,,vn,env_1,e_1,v_2,\dots,v_n,e_n of distinct vertices viv_i and distinct edges eie_i so that each eie_i contains viv_i and vi+1v_{i+1}. So the divisibility condition is clearly necessary. In this note, we prove that the conjecture holds whenever k4k \ge 4 and n30n \ge 30. Our argument is based on the Kruskal-Katona theorem. The case when k=3k=3 was already solved by Verrall, building on results of Bermond.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.7932,
  title  = {Decompositions of complete uniform hypergraphs into Hamilton Berge cycles},
  author = {Daniela Kühn and Deryk Osthus},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.7932},
  year   = {2014}
}