English

A Gray code for arborescences of tournaments

Combinatorics 2026-03-31 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

We consider the following question of Knuth: given a directed graph GG and a root rr, can the arborescences of GG rooted in rr be listed such that any two consecutive arborescences differ by only one arc? Such an ordering is called a pivot Gray code and can be formulated as a Hamiltonian path in the reconfiguration graph of the arborescences of GG under arc flips, also called flip graph of GG. We give a positive answer for tournaments and explore several conditions showing that the flip graph of a directed graph may contain no Hamiltonian cycles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.28614,
  title  = {A Gray code for arborescences of tournaments},
  author = {Marthe Bonamy and Michael Hoffmann and Clément Legrand-Duchesne and Günter Rote},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.28614},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

20 pages, 14 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:44:22.563Z