Related papers: Small hitting sets for longest paths and cycles

We present progress on three old conjectures about longest paths and cycles in graphs. The first pair of conjectures, due to Lov\'{a}sz from 1969 and Thomassen from 1978, respectively, states that all connected vertex-transitive graphs…

The \textit{longest path transversal number} of a connected graph $G$, denoted by $lpt(G)$, is the minimum size of a set of vertices of $G$ that intersects all longest paths in $G$. We present constant upper bounds for the longest path…

Let G be a graph of order n. Let lpt(G) be the minimum cardinality of a set X of vertices of G such that X intersects every longest path of G and define lct(G) analogously for cycles instead of paths. We prove that lpt(G) \leq…

Motivated by the classical conjectures of Lov\'asz, Thomassen, and Smith, recent work has renewed interest in the study of longest cycles in important graph families, such as vertex-transitive and highly connected graphs. In particular,…

Let $G$ be a connected graph on $n$ vertices. The Gallai number $Gal(G)$ of $G$ is the size of the smallest set of vertices that meets every maximum path in $G$. Gr\"unbaum constructed a graph $G$ with $Gal(G)=3$. Very recently, Long,…

Let $\lpt(G)$ be the minimum cardinality of a set of vertices that intersects all longest paths in a graph $G$. Let $\omega(G)$ be the size of a maximum clique in $G$, and $\tw(G)$ be the treewidth of $G$. We prove that $ \lpt(G) \leq…

A temporal graph $G$ is a sequence $(G_t)_{t \in I}$ of graphs on the same vertex set of size $n$. The \emph{temporal exploration problem} asks for the length of the shortest sequence of vertices that starts at a given vertex, visits every…

The famous Erd\H{o}s-Gallai Theorem on the Tur\'an number of paths states that every graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges contains a path with at least $\frac{2m}{n}$ edges. In this note, we first establish a simple but novel extension of…

A long-standing conjecture of Thomassen says that every longest cycle of a $3$-connected graph has a chord. Thomassen (2018) proved that if $G$ is $2$-connected and cubic, then any longest cycle must have a chord. He also showed that if $G$…

A conjecture attributed to Smith states that every pair of longest cycles in a $k$-connected graph intersect each other in at least $k$ vertices. In this paper, we show that every pair of longest cycles in a~$k$-connected graph on $n$…

A well-known question of Gallai (1966) asked whether there is a vertex which passes through all longest paths of a connected graph. Although this has been verified for some special classes of graphs such as outerplanar graphs, circular arc…

The $3$-path isolation number of a connected $n$-vertex graph $G$, denoted by $\iota(G,P_3)$, is the size of a smallest subset $D$ of the vertex set of $G$ such that the closed neighbourhood $N[D]$ of $D$ in $G$ intersects each $3$-vertex…

For a simple graph $G$, let $n$ and $m$ denote the number of vertices and edges in $G$, respectively. The Erd\H{o}s-Gallai theorem for paths states that in a simple $P_k$-free graph, $m \leq \frac{n(k-1)}{2}$, where $P_k$ denotes a path…

For an $n$-vertex graph $G$, let $h(G)$ denote the smallest size of a subset of $V(G)$ such that it intersects every maximum independent set of $G$. A conjecture posed by Bollob\'{a}s, Erd\H{o}s and Tuza in early 90s remains widely open,…

Dumas, Foucaud, Perez, and Todinca [SIAM J. Disc. Math., 2024] proved that if the vertex set of a graph $G$ can be covered by $k$ shortest paths, then the pathwidth of $G$ is bounded by $\mathcal{O}(k \cdot 3^k)$. We prove a coarse variant…

Two sharp lower bounds for the length of a longest cycle $C$ of a graph $G$ are presented in terms of the lengths of a longest path and a longest cycle of $G-C$, denoted by $\overline{p}$ and $\overline{c}$, respectively, combined with…

Lov\'{a}sz and Cherkassky discovered independently that, if $G$ is a finite graph and $T\subseteq V(G)$ such that the degree $d_G(v)$ is even for every vertex $v\in V(G)\setminus T$, then the maximum number of edge-disjoint paths which are…

A separating path system for a graph $G$ is a collection $\mathcal{P}$ of paths in $G$ such that for every two edges $e$ and $f$ in $G$, there is a path in $\mathcal{P}$ that contains $e$ but not $f$. We show that every $n$-vertex graph has…

In this paper, we prove a tight minimum degree condition in general graphs for the existence of paths between two given endpoints, whose lengths form a long arithmetic progression with common difference one or two. This allows us to obtain…

Thomassen's chord conjecture from 1976 states that every longest cycle in a $3$-connected graph has a chord. This is one of the most important unsolved problems in graph theory. Let $H$ be a subgraph of a graph $G$. A vertex $v$ of $H$ is…