English

Quest for graphs of Frank number $3$

Combinatorics 2022-09-20 v1

Abstract

In an orientation OO of the graph GG, the edge ee is deletable if and only if OeO-e is strongly connected. For a 33-edge-connected graph GG, H\"orsch and Szigeti defined the Frank number as the minimum kk for which GG admits kk orientations such that every edge ee of GG is deletable in at least one of the kk orientations. They conjectured the Frank number is at most 33 for every 33-edge-connected graph GG. They proved the Petersen graph has Frank number 33, but this was the only example with this property. We show an infinite class of graphs having Frank number 33. H\"orsch and Szigeti showed every 33-edge-colorable 33-edge-connected graph has Frank number at most 33. It is tempting to consider non-33-edge-colorable graphs as candidates for having Frank number greater than 22. Snarks are sometimes a good source of finding critical examples or counterexamples. One might suspect various snarks should have Frank number 33. However, we prove several candidate infinite classes of snarks have Frank number 22. As well as the generalized Petersen Graphs GP(2s+1,s)GP(2s+1,s). We formulate numerous conjectures inspired by our experience.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.08804,
  title  = {Quest for graphs of Frank number $3$},
  author = {János Barát and Zoltán L. Blázsik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.08804},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T01:33:56.960Z