Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2210.16406

Gallai's Conjecture for Complete and "Nearly Complete" Graphs

Hua Wang·Andrew Zhang
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The famous Gallai's Conjecture states that any connected graph with n vertices has a path decomposition containing at most (n+1)/2 paths. In this note, we explore graphs generated from removing edges from complete graphs. We first provide an explicit construction for a path decomposition of complete graphs that satisfies Gallai's Conjecture. We then use that construction to prove that we can remove stars and certain tadpoles such that the resulting graph still satisfies Gallai's Conjecture. We also introduce a potential general approach through analyzing non-isomorphic path decompositions of complete graphs.

Explore related subjects

math.CO

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Hua Wang, Andrew Zhang. 2022-10-28. Gallai's Conjecture for Complete and "Nearly Complete" Graphs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.16406

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Matching Complexes of Outerplanar Graphs

An outerplanar graph is a planar graph that has a planar drawing with all vertices on the unbounded face. The matching complex of a graph is the simplicial complex whose faces are subsets of disjoint edges of the graph. In this paper we prove that the matching complexes of outerplanar graphs are contractible or homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres. This extends known results about trees and polygonal line tilings.

math.CO↗
arXiv2026

Awesome graph parameters

For a graph $G$, we denote by $α(G)$ the size of a maximum independent set and by $ω(G)$ the size of a maximum clique in $G$. Our paper lies on the edge of two lines of research, related to $α$ and $ω$, respectively. One of them studies $α$-variants of graph parameters, such as $α$-treewidth or $α$-degeneracy. The second line deals with graph classes where some parameters are bounded by a function of $ω(G)$. A famous example of this type is the family of $χ$-bounded classes, where the chromatic number $χ(G)$ is bounded by a function of $ω(G)$. A Ramsey-type argument implies that if the $α$-variant of a graph parameter $ρ$ is bounded by a constant in a hereditary class $\mathcal{G}$, then $ρ$ is bounded by a function of $ω$ in $\mathcal{G}$. If the reverse implication also holds, we say that $ρ$ is awesome. Otherwise, we say that $ρ$ is awful. In the present paper, we identify a number of awesome and awful graph parameters, derive some algorithmic applications of awesomeness, and propose a number of open problems related to these notions.

math.CO↗
arXiv2026

Perfect matchings and $A_α$-spectral radius in 1-binding graphs

Let $G$ be a graph with vertex set $V(G)$ and edge set $E(G)$. For $α\in[0,1)$, we use $A_α(G)$ and $ρ_α(G)$ to denote the $A_α$-matrix and the $A_α$-spectral radius of $G$, respectively. The binding number $\mbox{bind}(G)$ of $G$ is defined by $\mbox{bind}(G)=\min\left\{\frac{|N_G(X)|}{|X|}:\emptyset\neq X\subseteq V(G),N_G(X)\neq V(G)\right\}$. If $\mbox{bind}(G)\geq1$, then $G$ is called 1-binding. A perfect matching in $G$ is a set of nonadjacent edges covering every vertex of $G$. Tutte proved that a graph $G$ of even order has a perfect matching if and only if $o(G-S)\leq|S|$ holds for every $S\subseteq V(G)$ [W. Tutte, The factorization of linear graphs, J. Lond. Math. Soc. 22 (1947) 107--111]. In this paper, we use Tutte's result to prove that a connected 1-binding graph $G$ of even order $n$ with $n\geq n(α)$ has a perfect matching unless $G=K_1\vee(K_{n-5}\cup K_3\cup K_1)$ if $ρ_α(G)\geqρ_α(K_1\vee(K_{n-5}\cup K_3\cup K_1))$, where $n(α)$ is defined as follows: $n(α)=\max\{18,\frac{2+8α}{1-2α}\}$ if $α\in[0,\frac{1}{2})$, and $n(α)=18$ if $α=\frac{1}{2}$.

math.CO↗