Flower-Snarks are Flow-Critical Cˆandida Nunes da Silva 1,3 DComp – CCTS ufscar Sorocaba, sp, Brazil Cl´audio L. Lucchesi 2,4 Faculty of Computing facom-ufms Campo Grande, ms, Brazil Abstract In this paper we show that all flower-snarks are 4-flow-critical graphs. Keywords: nowhere-zero k-flows, Tutte’s Conjectures, flower-snarks, 3-edge-colouring 1 Snarks and Flower-Snarks A snark is a cubic graph that does not admit a 3-edge-colouring, which is cyclically 4-edge-connected and has girth at least five. The Petersen graph 1 Support by fapesp and capes 2 Support by cnpq 3 Email: [email protected] 4 Email:[email protected] was the first snark discovered and, for several decades later, very few other snarks were found. This apparent difficulty in finding such graphs inspired Descartes to name them snarks after the Lewis Carroll poem ”The Hunting of the Snark”. Good accounts on the delightful history behind snarks hunt and their relevance in Graph Theory can be found in [2,7,1]. In 1975, Isaacs [5] showed that there were infinite families of snarks, one of such being the flower- snarks. A flower-snark Jn is a graph on 4n vertices, for n ≥ 5 and odd, whose vertices are labelled Vi = {wi, xi,yi, zi}, for 1 ≤ i ≤ n and whose edges can be partitioned into n star graphs and two cycles as we will next describe. Each quadruple Vi of vertices induce a star graph with wi as its center. Ver- tices zi induce an odd cycle (z1, z2,...,zn, z1). Vertices xi and yi induce an even cycle (x1, x2,...,xn,y1,y2,...,yn, x1). Figure 1 depicts several different drawings of flower-snark J5 on 20 vertices. The drawing of Figure 1(a) is the original drawing presented by Isaacs to represent flower-snarks. It emphasizes the flower-shape of such graphs as well as the crossing of edges (x1,yn) and (xn,y1). A more symmetric drawing of flower-snarks can be obtained from the original drawing by switching the positions of vertices xi and yi for even i. Figure 1(b) depicts the symmetric drawing of J5 thus obtained. We present a third representation of flower-snarks as a sequential string of stars induced by vertices Vi, each of which linked to Vi+1 by a set of three linking edges Ei = {(zi, zi+1), (xi, xi+1), (yi,yi+1)}, for 1 ≤ i ≤ n − 1 and closed by linking edges En = {(z1, zn), (x1,yn), (xn,y1)}. Figure 1(c) depicts a string drawing of J5. The symmetric drawing of a flower-snark is helpful in identifying its auto- morphisms. Clearly, there is an automorphism mapping every xi vertex into yi and vice-versa. Also, these graphs have rotational symmetry, i. e., an au- tomorphism mapping every zi into zi+1, wi into wi+1, xi into yi+1 and yi into 5 xi+1 . An appropriate combination of these two automorphisms can be used to map every vertex zi into zj, every vertex wi into wj and every vertex xi or yi into xj or yj. Therefore, there are essentially just four different types of edges in any flower-snark, which are (i) edges zizi+1, which are called internal edges; (ii) edges ziwi, which are called spoke edges; (iii) edges wixi and wiyi, which are called fork edges; (iv) edges xixi+1, yiyi+1, x1yn and xny1, which are called external edges. 5 These sums should be taken modulo n x3 y3 x3 y3 w3 w3 x4 y4 y2 x2 z z3 w4 3 w4 z4 y4 z4 x4 w2 w2 x2 z2 y2 z2 z5 z5 z1 z1 w5 w5 w1 x5 w1 x5 y1 y1 x1 y5 x1 y5 (a) Original drawing of flower-snark J5 (b) Symmetric drawing of flower-snark J5 x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 y1 y2 y3 y4 y5 w1 w2 w3 w4 w5 z1 z2 z3 z4 z5 (c) Drawing of flower-snark J5 as a string of star graphs Fig. 1. Several drawings of flower-snark J5 2 Flower-Snarks are Flow-Critical Let k > 1 be an integer, G =(V, E) be a graph and (D,ϕ) a pair of functions such that D defines orientations to the edges of E and ϕ associates to each edge in E a non-zero integer weight in the set {1, 2,...,k − 1}. The pair (D,ϕ) is a (nowhere-zero) k-flow of G if, for every vertex v ∈ V , the sum of the weights of all edges leaving v equal the sum of all edges entering v. Tutte [6] defined the concept of k-flows with the purpose of generalizing to non-planar graphs several problems regarding colourings of planar graphs. A famous theorem of Tutte (see [1, Theorem 21.11]), stated below, is essential to prove that flower-snarks are 4-flow-critical. Theorem 2.1 (Tutte) A cubic graph admits a 4-flow if and only if it admits a 3-edge-colouring. A graph G is k-colour-critical if it does not admit a k-vertex-colouring but every proper subgraph of G admits a k-vertex-colouring. Dirac [4] defined the concept of critical graphs for the vertex-colouring problem and discovered several properties of such graphs. Likewise, in a previous paper [3] we defined the concept of (edge-)k-flow-critical graphs. A graph G is k-flow-critical if it does not admit a k-flow but the graph G/e obtained from G by the contrac- tion of an arbitrary edge e does admit a k-flow. Moreover, as stated in [3, Theorem 3.1], a k-flow-critical graph can be equivalently defined as a graph G that does not admit a k-flow but the graph G − e obtained from G by the removal of an arbitrary edge e does admit a k-flow. We will show in this section that every flower-snark is 4-flow-critical. It follows from the definition of snarks and Theorem 2.1, that those do not admit a 4-flow. Therefore, it suffices to show that if we remove any edge of a flower- snark, the resulting graph admits a 4-flow. Let e = (u, v) be any edge of a flower-snark Jn. As Jn is cubic, Jn − e is a subdivision of a cubic graph, with u and v being its only vertices of degree two. Let He be the cubic graph obtained from Jn −e by the contraction of two edges: one incident with u and the other with v. We call He the underlying cubic graph of Jn − e. It can be trivially shown that He will have a 4-flow if and only if Jn − e has a 4-flow. Therefore, it suffices to show that He admit a 3-edge-colouring of its edges, for every edge e of Jn. Let Ja,b, for 1 ≤ a < b ≤ n − 1, be the subgraph of Jn induced by the edges in Ei for a ≤ i ≤ b and in G[Vi] for a<i<b. We say Ja,b has a clock- wise rotated 3-colouring if it has a 3-edge-colouring such that the edges in Ea receive a different colour each and those colours appear clockwise rotated in Eb, i.e., the pairs of edges {(za, za+1), (xb, xb+1)}, {(xa, xa+1), (yb,yb+1)} and {(ya,ya+1), (zb, zb+1)} receive one different colour each. Figure 2(a) illustrates a clockwise rotated 3-colouring of Ja,a+1, for 1 ≤ a ≤ n − 2. The colours assigned to the edges are represented by three different patterns of line draw- ings. Similarly, we say Ja,b has a counter-clockwise rotated 3-colouring if it has a 3-edge-colouring such that the edges in Ea receive a different colour each and those colours appear counter-clockwise rotated in Eb, i.e., the pairs of edges {(za, za+1), (yb,yb+1)}, {(xa, xa+1), (zb, zb+1)} and {(ya,ya+1), (xb, xb+1)} receive one different colour each. Figure 2(b) illustrates a counter-clockwise rotated 3-colouring of Ja,a+1, for 1 ≤ a ≤ n − 2. The simple observation of the 3-colourings depicted on Figure 2 allow us to state the following lemma: Lemma 2.2 Every Ja,a+1 for 1 ≤ a ≤ n − 2 has both a clockwise and a xa xa+1 xa+2 xa xa+1 xa+2 ya ya+1 ya+2 ya ya+1 ya+2 wa+1 wa+1 za za+1 za+2 za za+1 za+2 Ea Ea+1 Ea Ea+1 (a) Clockwise 3-colouring of Ja,a+1 (b) Counter-clockwise 3-colouring of Ja,a+1 Fig. 2. Clockwise and counter-clockwise 3-colourings of Ja,a+1 counter-clockwise rotated 3-colouring. Following the same idea, we say Ja,b has a neutral 3-colouring if it has a 3-edge-colouring such that the edges in Ea receive a different colour each and those colours appear replicated in Eb, i.e., the pairs of edges {(za, za+1), (zb, zb+1)}, {(xa, xa+1), (xb, xb+1)} and {(ya,ya+1), (yb,yb+1)} receive one different colour each. In Figure 3 we present a neutral 3-colouring of Ja,a+2, for 1 ≤ a ≤ n − 3, and of Ja,a+3, for 1 ≤ a ≤ n − 4. The neutral 3-colouring of Figure 3(a) was obtained by combining a clockwise rotated 3-colouring of Ja,a+1 and a counter-clockwise rotated 3-colouring of Ja+1,a+2 whose colours coincide in Ea+1.