English

Halin's end degree conjecture

Combinatorics 2020-10-21 v1

Abstract

An end of a graph GG is an equivalence class of rays, where two rays are equivalent if there are infinitely many vertex-disjoint paths between them in GG. The degree of an end is the maximum cardinality of a collection of pairwise disjoint rays in this equivalence class. Halin conjectured that the end degree can be characterised in terms of certain typical ray configurations, which would generalise his famous \emph{grid theorem}. In particular, every end of regular uncountable degree κ\kappa would contain a \emph{star of rays}, i.e.\ a configuration consisting of a central ray RR and κ\kappa neighbouring rays (Ri ⁣:i<κ)(R_i \colon i < \kappa) all disjoint from each other and each RiR_i sending a family of infinitely many disjoint paths to RR so that paths from distinct families only meet in RR. We show that Halin's conjecture fails for end degree 1 \aleph_1, holds for 2,3,,ω\aleph_2,\aleph_3,\ldots,\aleph_\omega, fails for ω+1 \aleph_{\omega+1}, and is undecidable (in ZFC) for the next ω+n\aleph_{\omega+n} with nNn \in \mathbb{N}, n2n \geq 2. Further results include a complete solution for all cardinals under GCH, complemented by a number of consistency results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.10394,
  title  = {Halin's end degree conjecture},
  author = {Stefan Geschke and Jan Kurkofka and Ruben Melcher and Max Pitz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.10394},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:29:38.358Z