English

Multigraphs with Unique Partition into Cycles

Combinatorics 2025-04-14 v1

Abstract

Due to Veblen's Theorem, if a connected multigraph XX has even degrees at each vertex, then it is Eulerian and its edge set has a partition into cycles. In this paper, we show that an Eulerian multigraph has a unique partition into cycles if and only if it belongs to the family S\mathcal{S}, ``bridgeless cactus multigraphs", elements of which are obtained by replacing every edge of a tree with a cycle of length 2\geq 2. Other characterizing conditions for bridgeless cactus multigraphs and digraphs are provided. Furthermore, for a digraph DD, we list conditions equivalent to having a unique Eulerian circuit, thereby generalizing a previous result of Arratia-Bollob\'{a}s-Sorkin. In particular, we show that digraphs with a unique Eulerian circuit constitute a subfamily of S\mathcal{S}, namely, ``Christmas cactus digraphs".

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.08083,
  title  = {Multigraphs with Unique Partition into Cycles},
  author = {Joshua Cooper and Utku Okur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.08083},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:54:11.368Z