English

Flow-critical graphs

Combinatorics 2026-02-10 v3

Abstract

Lov\'{a}sz et al. proved that every 66-edge-connected graph has a nowhere-zero 33-flow. In fact, they proved a more technical statement which says that there exists a nowhere zero 33-flow that extends the flow prescribed on the incident edges of a single vertex zz with bounded degree. We extend this theorem of Lov\'{a}sz et al. to allow zz to have arbitrary degree, but with the additional assumption that there is another vertex xx with large degree and no small cut separating xx and zz. Using this theorem, we prove two results regarding the generation of minimal graphs with the property that prescribing the edges incident to a vertex with specific flow does not extend to a nowhere-zero 33-flow. We use this to further strengthen the theorem of Lov\'{a}sz et al., as well as make progress on a conjecture of Li et al.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.01451,
  title  = {Flow-critical graphs},
  author = {Arnbjörg Soffía Árnadóttir and Zdeněk Dvořák and Bernard Lidický and Benjamin Moore and Evelyne Smith-Roberge and Robert Šámal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.01451},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

52 pages, in Journal of Graph Theory