English

Hamilton transversals in random Latin squares

Combinatorics 2022-04-12 v3

Abstract

Gy\'{a}rf\'{a}s and S\'{a}rk\"{o}zy conjectured that every n×nn\times n Latin square has a `cycle-free' partial transversal of size n2n-2. We confirm this conjecture in a strong sense for almost all Latin squares, by showing that as nn \rightarrow \infty, all but a vanishing proportion of n×nn\times n Latin squares have a Hamilton transversal, i.e. a full transversal for which any proper subset is cycle-free. In fact, we prove a counting result that in almost all Latin squares, the number of Hamilton transversals is essentially that of Taranenko's upper bound on the number of full transversals. This result strengthens a result of Kwan (which in turn implies that almost all Latin squares also satisfy the famous Ryser-Brualdi-Stein conjecture).

Cite

@article{arxiv.2104.12718,
  title  = {Hamilton transversals in random Latin squares},
  author = {Stephen Gould and Tom Kelly},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.12718},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

28 pages, 4 figures. To appear in Random Structures & Algorithms

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:31:59.728Z