Related papers: Some snarks are worse than others
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…
It is conjectured by Berge and Fulkerson that every bridgeless cubic graph has six perfect matchings such that each edge is contained in exactly two of them. H$\ddot{a}$gglund constructed two graphs Blowup$(K_4, C)$ and Blowup$(Prism,…
A conjecture of Fan and Raspaud [3] asserts that every bridgeless cubic graph con-tains three perfect matchings with empty intersection. Kaiser and Raspaud [6] sug-gested a possible approach to this problem based on the concept of a…
Berge Conjecture states that every bridgeless cubic graph has 5 perfect matchings such that each edge is contained in at least one of them. In this paper, we show that Berge Conjecture holds for two classes of cubic graphs, cubic graphs…
The perfect matching index of a cubic graph $G$, denoted by $\pi(G)$, is the smallest number of perfect matchings that cover all the edges of $G$. According to the Berge-Fulkerson conjecture, $\pi(G)\le5$ for every bridgeless cubic…
If $G$ is a bridgeless cubic graph, Fulkerson conjectured that we can find 6 perfect matchings (a{\em Fulkerson covering}) with the property that every edge of $G$ is contained in exactly two of them. A consequence of the Fulkerson…
The Fan-Raspaud Conjecture states that every bridgeless cubic graph has three 1-factors with empty intersection. A weaker one than this conjecture is that every bridgeless cubic graph has two 1-factors and one join with empty intersection.…
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…
For many of the unsolved problems concerning cycles and matchings in graphs it is known that it is sufficient to prove them for \emph{snarks}, the class of nontrivial 3-regular graphs which cannot be 3-edge coloured. In the first part of…
The strong cycle double cover conjecture states that for every circuit $C$ of a bridgeless cubic graph $G$, there is a cycle double cover of $G$ which contains $C$. We conjecture that there is even a 5-cycle double cover $S$ of $G$ which…
The Cycle double cover (CDC) conjecture states that for every bridgeless graph $G$, there exists a family $\mathcal{F}$ of cycles such that each edge of the graph is contained in exactly two members of $\mathcal{F}$. Given an embedding of a…
A {\em snark} is a cubic cyclically 4-edge connected graph with edge chromatic number four and girth at least five. We say that a graph $G$ is {\em odd 2-factored} if for each 2-factor F of G each cycle of F is odd. In this paper, we…
A conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson (1971) states that every cubic bridgeless graph contains 6 perfect matchings covering each edge precisely twice, which easily implies that every cubic bridgeless graph has three perfect matchings with…
A snark is a bridgeless cubic graph which is not 3-edge-colourable. The oddness of a bridgeless cubic graph is the minimum number of odd components in any 2-factor of the graph. Lukot'ka, M\'acajov\'a, Maz\'ak and \v{S}koviera showed in…
The Berge-Fulkerson conjecture states that every bridgeless cubic graph can be covered with six perfect matchings such that each edge is covered exactly twice. An equivalent reformulation is that it's possible to find a 6-cycle 4-cover. In…
Let $G$ be a bridgeless cubic graph. In 2023, the three authors solved a conjecture (also known as the $S_4$-Conjecture) made by Mazzuoccolo in 2013: there exist two perfect matchings of $G$ such that the complement of their union is a…
We study snarks whose edges cannot be covered by fewer than five perfect matchings. Esperet and Mazzuoccolo found an infinite family of such snarks, generalising an example provided by Hagglund. We construct another infinite family, arising…
In an edge-coloring of a cubic graph, an edge is poor or rich, if the set of colors assigned to the edge and the four edges adjacent it, has exactly five or exactly three distinct colors, respectively. An edge is normal in an edge-coloring…
We discuss the question whether the existence of perfect matchings in a cubic graph can be seen from the spectrum of its adjacency matrix. For regular graphs in general and for three edge-disjoint perfect matchings in a cubic graph (that…
In a proper edge-coloring of a cubic graph, an edge $e$ is normal if the set of colors used by the edges adjacent to $e$ has cardinality 3 or 5. The Petersen coloring conjecture asserts that every bridgeless cubic graph has a normal…