English

On the expansion of Hanoi graphs

Combinatorics 2025-10-22 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

The famous Tower of Hanoi puzzle involves moving nn discs of distinct sizes from one of p3p\geq 3 pegs (traditionally p=3p=3) to another of the pegs, subject to the constraints that only one disc may be moved at a time, and no disc can ever be placed on a disc smaller than itself. Much is known about the Hanoi graph HpnH_p^n, whose pnp^n vertices represent the configurations of the puzzle, and whose edges represent the pairs of configurations separated by a single legal move. In a previous paper, the present authors presented nearly tight asymptotic bounds of O((p2)n)O((p-2)^n) and Ω(n(1p)/2(p2)n)\Omega(n^{(1-p)/2}(p-2)^n) on the treewidth of this graph for fixed p3p \geq 3. In this paper we show that the upper bound is tight, by giving a matching lower bound of Ω((p2)n)\Omega((p-2)^n) for the expansion of HpnH_p^n.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.18010,
  title  = {On the expansion of Hanoi graphs},
  author = {David Eppstein and Daniel Frishberg and William Maxwell},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.18010},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 5 figures