English

Gallai's Path Decomposition for 2-degenerate Graphs

Combinatorics 2024-02-14 v3 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Gallai's path decomposition conjecture states that if GG is a connected graph on nn vertices, then the edges of GG can be decomposed into at most n2\lceil \frac{n }{2} \rceil paths. A graph is said to be an odd semi-clique if it can be obtained from a clique on 2k+12k+1 vertices by deleting at most k1k-1 edges. Bonamy and Perrett asked if the edges of every connected graph GG on nn vertices can be decomposed into at most n2\lfloor \frac{n}{2} \rfloor paths unless GG is an odd semi-clique. A graph GG is said to be 2-degenerate if every subgraph of GG has a vertex of degree at most 22. In this paper, we prove that the edges of any connected 2-degenerate graph GG on nn vertices can be decomposed into at most n2\lfloor \frac{n }{2} \rfloor paths unless GG is a triangle.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.07159,
  title  = {Gallai's Path Decomposition for 2-degenerate Graphs},
  author = {Nevil Anto and Manu Basavaraju},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.07159},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

11 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T05:46:52.546Z