Homeomorphically Irreducible Spanning Trees, Halin Graphs, and Long Cycles in 3-Connected Graphs with Bounded Maximum Degrees
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Mathematics Dissertations Department of Mathematics and Statistics 5-11-2015 Homeomorphically Irreducible Spanning Trees, Halin Graphs, and Long Cycles in 3-connected Graphs with Bounded Maximum Degrees Songling Shan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/math_diss Recommended Citation Shan, Songling, "Homeomorphically Irreducible Spanning Trees, Halin Graphs, and Long Cycles in 3-connected Graphs with Bounded Maximum Degrees." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2015. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/math_diss/23 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mathematics Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Homeomorphically Irreducible Spanning Trees, Halin Graphs, and Long Cycles in 3-connected Graphs with Bounded Maximum Degrees by Songling Shan Under the Direction of Guantao Chen, PhD ABSTRACT A tree T with no vertex of degree 2 is called a homeomorphically irreducible tree (HIT) and if T is spanning in a graph, then T is called a homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree (HIST). Albertson, Berman, Hutchinson and Thomassen asked if every triangulation of at least 4 vertices has a HIST and if every connected graph with each edge in at least two triangles contains a HIST. These two questions were restated as two conjectures by Archdeacon in 2009. The first part of this dissertation gives a proof for each of the two conjectures. The second part focuses on some problems about Halin graphs, which is a class of graphs closely related to HITs and HISTs. A Halin graph is obtained from a plane embedding of a HIT of at least 4 vertices by connecting its leaves into a cycle following the cyclic order determined by the embedding. And a generalized Halin graph is obtained from a HIT of at least 4 vertices by connecting the leaves into a cycle. Let G be a sufficiently large n-vertex graph. Applying the Regularity Lemma and the Blow-up Lemma, it is shown that G contains a spanning Halin subgraph if it has minimum degree at least (n +1)/2 and G contains a spanning generalized Halin subgraph if it is 3-connected and has minimum degree at least (2n + 3)/5. The minimum degree conditions are best possible. The last part estimates the length of longest cycles in 3-connected graphs with bounded maximum degrees. In 1993 Jackson and Wormald conjectured that for any positive integer d 4, there ≥ exists a positive real number α depending only on d such that if G is a 3-connected n-vertex graph with maximum degree d, then G has a cycle of length at least αnlogd−1 2. They showed that the exponent in the bound is best possible if the conjecture is true. The conjecture is confirmed for d 425. ≥ INDEX WORDS: Homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree, Halin graph, Genaralized Halin graph, 3-connected graphs, Tutte decomposition. Homeomorphically Irreducible Spanning Trees, Halin Graphs, and Long Cycles in 3-connected Graphs with Bounded Maximum Degrees by Songling Shan A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2015 Copyright by Songling Shan 2015 Homeomorphically Irreducible Spanning Trees, Halin Graphs, and Long Cycles in 3-connected Graphs with Bounded Maximum Degrees by Songling Shan Committee Chair: Guantao Chen Committee: Ron Gould Frank Hall Zhongshan Li Hendricus Van der Holst Yi Zhao Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2015 iv DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my family and my advisor Professor Guantao Chen. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation work would not have been possible without the support of many people. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Professor Guantao Chen. He serves not just as an academic advisor, but also like a friend and a father. What I appreciate most is his always-open office door, whenever I have questions, I can just walk in, talk to him and discuss with him. His guidance and suggestions keep me going forward for tracking research problems and living positively. On Chinese new year and other Chinese holidays, he invites us to his home for dinner. For students like me who are thousands of miles away from home, he offers us the home-like comfort. There are so many words of gratitude that I want to express, but I just don’t know where and how to start. Above all, it is the biggest treasure in my life to have Professor Chen as my advisor. Thanks also to Professor Frank Hall and Professor Zhongshan Li. Their help and encouragement lightened my life at GSU. I wish to thank the other members of my dissertation committee: Professors Ron Gould, Hendricus Van der Holst and Yi Zhao. In addition, I give my gratitude to all the other faculty and staff members in the department. Also, I would like to thank my group members Nana Li, Ping Yang, and Amy Yates. Beyond metropolitan Atlanta, I sincerely thank Professor Mark Ellingham of Vanderbilt University, whom I got to know in my first year at GSU, and who has helped me as a mentor; I also sincerely thank Professor Akira Saito, he is like my secondary advisor. Further back, I would like to thank my first graph theory enlightenment teacher Professor Bing Yao. It was he who helped me in writing the first research paper; and that was the very primary motivation of my stepping on the research journey in graph theory. Then it is the time to say thanks to my Master of Science advisor Professor Han Ren, and one of my favorite professors at East China Normal University, Professor Xingzhi Zhan. Finally and most importantly, I thank my family members both in China and in the US for their love and support. Thinking of them, deep in my heart, can always calm me down, and is always a wonderful thing to do. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................. v LIST OF FIGURES .................... viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................ ix PART 1 INTRODUCTION ............... 1 PART 2 THE EXISTENCE OF HISTS IN SURFACE TRIANGU- LATIONS AND CONNECTED GRAPHS WITH EACH EDGE IN AT LEAST TWO TRIANGLES ...... 3 2.1 Proof of Conjecture 2.1 .......................... 4 2.1.1 ProofofTheorem2.1.1........................ 4 2.2 Proof of Conjecture 2.2 .......................... 7 2.2.1 ProofofTheorem2.2.1........................ 8 PART 3 MINIMUM DEGREECONDITION FOR SPANNINGHALIN GRAPHS AND SPANNINGGENERALIZED HALIN GRAPHS 16 3.1 Notations and definitions ......................... 16 3.2 The Regularity Lemma and the Blow-up Lemma .......... 17 3.3 Dirac’s sondition for spanning Halin graphs ............. 18 3.3.1 Introduction.............................. 18 3.3.2 Ladders and “ladder-like” Halin graphs . 21 3.3.3 ProofofTheorem3.3.1........................ 23 3.3.3.1 Proof of Theorem 3.3.2 . 26 3.3.3.2 Proof of Theorem 3.3.3 . 30 3.3.3.3 Proof of Theorem 3.4.3 . 38 vii 3.4 Minimum degree condition for spanning generalized Halin graphs 48 3.4.1 Introduction.............................. 48 3.4.2 Proof of Theorem 3.4.1 and the sharpness of Theorem 3.4.2 . 50 3.4.3 ProofofTheorem3.4.2........................ 52 3.4.3.1 Proof of Theorem 3.4.3 . 53 3.4.3.2 Proof of Theorem 3.4.4 . 75 3.4.3.3 Proof of Theorem 3.4.5 . 84 PART 4 A LOWER BOUND ON CIRCUMFERENCES OF 3- CONNECTED GRAPHS WITH BOUNDED MAXIMUM DEGREES .................. 102 4.1 Introduction ................................. 102 4.2 Paths in block-chains ........................... 104 4.3 Lower bounds of mlogb 2 + nlogb 2 ...................... 108 4.4 Long paths in block-chains ........................ 111 4.5 Proofs of Theorem (4.1.1) (a) and (b) ................. 126 4.5.1 Case 1: t 2 or t 2. ...................... 129 1 ≥ 2 ≥ 4.5.2 Case 2. t1 = t2 =1. ......................... 131 4.6 Reduction of Theorem (4.1.1)(c) .................... 133 4.6.1 Case 1 x / p, q . .......................... 140 ∈{ } 4.6.1.1 Subcase1.1. p, q = a , b = V (H H ). ..... 141 { } 6 { t t} t ∩ t+1 4.6.1.2 Case p, q = a , b = V (H H ).......... 143 { } { t t} t ∩ t+1 4.6.2 Case 2 x p, q . .......................... 149 ∈{ } REFERENCES ..................... 167 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure2.1 G4, a locally connected graph without a spanning 2-tree . 5 Figure2.2 Θ-graph,∆-operation,Θ-operation . .. 9 Figure2.3 uw / E(T ′) or uw E(T ′) E(G) ................ 13 1 ∈ 1 ∈ ∩ Figure2.4 uw E(T ′) E(G)......................... 15 1 ∈ − Figure3.1 L4, Hi constructed from L4, and Ti associated with Hi for each i = 1, 2, , 5 ............................... 24 · · · Figure3.2 Ladder L oforder14......................... 26 Figure3.3 A Halin graph H ........................... 29 Figure3.4 The HIT TB .............................. 64 Figure3.5 The tree TA .............................. 66 Figure3.6 The tree T11 .............................. 77 Figure3.7 T with I =1............................ 92 W | | Figure3.8 F with M =3........................... 93 M | | ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS GSU - Georgia State University • HIT - Homeomorphically irreducible tree • HIST - Homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree • SGHG - Spanning generalized Halin subgraph • 1 PART 1 INTRODUCTION Finding longest cycles, in particular a hamiltonian cycle in a graph, is one of a few fundamental yet very difficult problems in graph theory. In fact, to determine whether a graph is hamiltonian is a classic NP-complete problem. Moreover, Karger, Motwani, and Ramkumar [35] showed that, unless = , it is impossible to find, in polynomial time, a P N P path of length n nǫ in an n-vertex hamiltonian graph for any ǫ < 1.