Related papers: Cubic graphs with large circumference deficit

We present a construction which shows that there is an infinite set of cyclically 4-edge connected cubic graphs on $n$ vertices with no cycle longer than $c_4 n$ for $c_4=\frac{12}{13}$, and at the same time prove that a certain natural…

Snarks are $2$-connected cubic graphs that do not admit a proper $3$-edge-coloring. For a cubic graph $G$, its resistance $r(G)$ is the minimum number of edges whose removal results in a $3$-edge-colorable graph, while its flow resistance…

The problem of establishing the number of perfect matchings necessary to cover the edge-set of a cubic bridgeless graph is strictly related to a famous conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson. In this paper we prove that deciding whether this…

We estimate the minimum number of vertices of a cubic graph with given oddness and cyclic connectivity. We prove that a bridgeless cubic graph $G$ with oddness $\omega(G)$ other than the Petersen graph has at least $5.41\cdot\omega(G)$…

Many conjectures and open problems in graph theory can either be reduced to cubic graphs or are directly stated for cubic graphs. Furthermore, it is known that for a lot of problems, a counterexample must be a snark, i.e. a bridgeless cubic…

In this paper we show that many snarks have shortest cycle covers of length $\frac{4}{3}m+c$ for a constant $c$, where $m$ is the number of edges in the graph, in agreement with the conjecture that all snarks have shortest cycle covers of…

A snark -- connected cubic graph with chromatic index $4$ -- is critical if the graph resulting from the removal of any pair of distinct adjacent vertices is $3$-edge-colourable; it is bicritical if the same is true for any pair of distinct…

A cycle cover of a graph is a collection of cycles such that each edge of the graph is contained in at least one of the cycles. The length of a cycle cover is the sum of all cycle lengths in the cover. We prove that every bridgeless cubic…

We show that every bridgeless cubic graph $G$ with $m$ edges has a cycle cover of length at most $1.6 m$. Moreover, if $G$ does not contain any intersecting circuits of length $5$, then $G$ has a cycle cover of length $212/135 \cdot m…

The colouring defect of a cubic graph, introduced by Steffen in 2015, is the minimum number of edges that are left uncovered by any set of three perfect matchings. Since a cubic graph has defect $0$ if and only if it is $3$-edge-colourable,…

In this note we construct two infinite snark families which have high oddness and low circumference compared to the number of vertices. Using this construction, we also give a counterexample to a suggested strengthening of Fulkerson's…

A $3$-connected graph $G$ is essentially $4$-connected if, for any $3$-cut $S\subseteq V(G)$ of $G$, at most one component of $G-S$ contains at least two vertices. We prove that every essentially $4$-connected maximal planar graph $G$ on…

The oddness of a cubic graph is the smallest number of odd circuits in a 2-factor of the graph. This invariant is widely considered to be one of the most important measures of uncolourability of cubic graphs and as such has been repeatedly…

We show that there exists an infinite family of cubic $2$-connected non-hamiltonian graphs with girth $5$ containing a unique longest cycle.

Given a graph $G$, a dominating set of $G$ is a set $S$ of vertices such that each vertex not in $S$ has a neighbor in $S$. The domination number of $G$, denoted $\gamma(G)$, is the minimum size of a dominating set of $G$. The independent…

A cubic graph $G$ is cyclically 5-connected if $G$ is simple, 3-connected, has at least 10 vertices and for every set $F$ of edges of size at most four, at most one component of $G\backslash F$ contains circuits. We prove that if $G$ and…

A conjecture of Berge suggests that every bridgeless cubic graph can have its edges covered with at most five perfect matchings. Since three perfect matchings suffice only when the graph in question is $3$-edge-colourable, the rest of cubic…

We show that if G is a 4-critical graph embedded in a fixed surface $\Sigma$ so that every contractible cycle has length at least 5, then G can be expressed as $G=G'\cup G_1\cup G_2\cup ... \cup G_k$, where $|V(G')|$ and $k$ are bounded by…

The essential requirement for a cubic graph to be called a snark is that it can not be edge-coloured with three colours. To avoid trivial cases, varying restrictions on the connectivity are imposed. Snarks are not only interesting in…

Let $G$ be a cubic graph which has a decomposition into a spanning tree $T$ and a $2$-regular subgraph $C$, i.e. $E(T) \cup E(C) = E(G)$ and $E(T) \cap E(C) = \emptyset$. We provide an answer to the following question: which lengths can the…