Related papers: Star-Forest Decompositions of Complete Graphs
Given two graphs $X$ and $Y$ with the same number of vertices, the friends-and-strangers graph $\mathsf{FS}(X, Y)$ has as its vertices all $n!$ bijections from $V(X)$ to $V(Y)$, with bijections $\sigma, \tau$ adjacent if and only if they…
In 1968, Gallai conjectured that the edges of any connected graph with $n$ vertices can be partitioned into $\lceil \frac{n}{2} \rceil$ paths. We show that this conjecture is true for every planar graph. More precisely, we show that every…
We consider the problem of decomposing a given (di)graph into paths of length 2 with the additional restriction that no two such paths may have more than one vertex in common. We establish its NP-hardness by a reduction from 3-SAT,…
For some geometric graph classes, tractability of testing first-order formulas is precisely characterised by the graph parameter twin-width. This was first proved for interval graphs among others in [BCKKLT, IPEC '22], where the equivalence…
In this work we obtain basis for the null space of unicyclic graphs. We extend the null decomposition of trees from [11] for unicyclic graphs. As an application, we obtain closed formulas for the independence and matching numbers of…
A biclique of a graph $G$ is an induced complete bipartite subgraph of $G$ such that neither part is empty. A star is a biclique of $G$ such that one part has exactly one vertex. The star graph of $G$ is the intersection graph of the…
Let $\mathcal{D}$ be a set of straight-line segments in the plane, potentially crossing, and let $c$ be a positive integer. We denote by $P$ the union of the endpoints of the straight-line segments of $\mathcal{D}$ and of the intersection…
The energy of a graph is defined as the sum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of the graph. In this paper, we present a new method to compare the energies of two $k$-subdivision bipartite graphs on some cut edges. As the…
The perfect matching polytope, i.e. the convex hull of (incidence vectors of) perfect matchings of a graph is used in many combinatorial algorithms. Kotzig, Lov\'asz and Plummer developed a decomposition theory for graphs with perfect…
In 2006, Barat and Thomassen conjectured in 2006 that the edges of every planar 4-regular 4-edge-connected graph can be decomposed into copies of the star with 3 leaves. Shortly afterward, Lai constructed a counterexample to this…
The twisted graph $T_{n}$ is a drawing of the complete graph with $n$ vertices $v_{1},v_{2},\ldots ,v_{n}$ in which two edges $v_{i}v_{j}$ ($i<j$) and $v_{s}v_{t}$ ($s<t$) cross if and only if $i<s<t<j$ or $s<i<j<t$. We show that for any…
Tree-decompositions of graphs are of fundamental importance in structural and algorithmic graph theory. The main property of tree-decompositions is the width (the maximum size of a bag minus 1). We show that every graph has a…
The arboricity $\Gamma(G)$ of an undirected graph $G =(V,E)$ is the minimal number $k$ such that $E$ can be partitioned into $k$ forests on $V$. Nash-Williams' formula states that $k = \lceil \gamma(G) \rceil$, where $\gamma(G)$ is the…
We prove that a complete bipartite graph can be decomposed into cycles of arbitrary specified lengths provided that the obvious necessary conditions are satisfied, the length of each cycle is at most the size of the smallest part, and the…
We prove that every graph with sufficiently large minimum degree $d$ contains a spanning forest in which every component is a star of size at least $\sqrt{d} - \tilde O(d^{1/4})$. This improves the result of Alon and Wormald and is optimal…
A linear forest is a union of vertex-disjoint paths, and the linear arboricity of a graph $G$, denoted by $\operatorname{la}(G)$, is the minimum number of linear forests needed to partition the edge set of $G$. Clearly,…
One of the most important questions in matroid optimization is to find disjoint common bases of two matroids. The significance of the problem is well-illustrated by the long list of conjectures that can be formulated as special cases.…
A path decomposition of a graph G is a collection of edge-disjoint paths of G that covers the edge set of G. Gallai (1968) conjectured that every connected graph on n vertices admits a path decomposition of cardinality at most (n+1)/2.…
A graph $G$ is perfectly divisible if, for every induced subgraph $H$ of $G$, either $V(H)$ is a stable set or admits a partition into two sets $X_1$ and $X_2$ such that $\omega(H[X_1]) < \omega(H)$ and $H[X_2]$ is a perfect graph. In this…
A star edge coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper edge coloring with no 2-colored path or cycle of length four. The star edge coloring problem is to find an edge coloring of a given graph $G$ with minimum number $k$ of colors such that $G$…