363:, an embedding of a graph on a surface in such a way that every face is a simple cycle and every two faces that intersect do so in either a single vertex or a single edge. (In the case of a cubic graph, this can be simplified to a requirement that every two faces that intersect do so in a single edge.) Thus, in view of the reduction of the cycle double cover conjecture to snarks, it is of interest to investigate polyhedral embeddings of snarks. Unable to find such embeddings,
215:. Thus, every minimal counterexample must be cubic. But if a cubic graph can have its edges 3-colored (say with the colors red, blue, and green), then the subgraph of red and blue edges, the subgraph of blue and green edges, and the subgraph of red and green edges each form a collection of disjoint cycles that together cover all edges of the graph twice. Therefore, every minimal counterexample must be a non-3-edge-colorable bridgeless cubic graph, that is, a snark.
47:
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has four or more incident edges, one may “split off” two of those edges by removing them from the graph and replacing them by a single edge connecting their two other endpoints, while preserving the bridgelessness of the resulting graph. Again, a double cover of the resulting graph may be extended in
144:
undirected graph has a collection of cycles such that each edge of the graph is contained in exactly two of the cycles. The requirement that the graph be bridgeless is an obvious necessary condition for such a set of cycles to exist, because a bridge cannot belong to any cycle. A collection of cycles
205:
to the cycle double cover conjecture, all vertices must have three or more incident edges. For, a vertex with only one edge incident forms a bridge, while if two edges are incident on a vertex, one can contract them to form a smaller graph such that any double cover of the smaller graph extends to
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onto the manifold, in that every face of the embedding is a simple cycle in the graph. However, a cycle double cover of a graph with degree greater than three may not correspond to an embedding on a manifold: the cell complex formed by the cycles of the cover may have non-manifold topology at its
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of reducible configurations there is a number Îł such that all configurations in the set contain a cycle of length at most Îł. However, there exist snarks with arbitrarily high girth, that is, with arbitrarily high bounds on the length of their shortest cycle. A snark
347:
of the cycles in the cover have also been considered. The strongest of these is a conjecture that every bridgeless graph has a circular embedding on an orientable manifold in which the faces can be 5-colored. If true, this would imply a conjecture of
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will replace the triangle by a single vertex; any cycle double cover of the smaller graph can be extended back to a cycle double cover of the original cubic graph. Therefore, a minimal counterexample to the cycle double cover conjecture must be a
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which contain triangles. Through computer searches, it is known that every cycle of length 11 or less in a cubic graph forms a reducible configuration, and therefore that any minimal counterexample to the cycle double cover conjecture must have
328:. In terms of the cycle double cover conjecture, this is equivalent to the conjecture that there exists a cycle double cover, and an orientation for each of the cycles in the cover, such that for every edge
248:
Unfortunately, it is not possible to prove the cycle double cover conjecture using a finite set of reducible configurations. Every reducible configuration contains a cycle, so for every finite set
227:, a subgraph that can be replaced by a smaller subgraph in a way that would preserve the existence or nonexistence of a cycle double cover. For instance, if a cubic graph contains a triangle, a
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For cubic graphs, 2-vertex-connectedness and bridgelessness are equivalent. Therefore, the circular embedding conjecture is clearly at least as strong as the cycle double cover conjecture.
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a straightforward way to a double cover of the original graph: every cycle of the split off graph corresponds either to a cycle of the original graph, or to a pair of cycles meeting at
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A stronger version of the circular embedding conjecture that has also been considered is the conjecture that every 2-vertex-connected graph has a circular embedding on an
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4). It turns out that snarks form the only difficult case of the cycle double cover conjecture: if the conjecture is true for snarks, it is true for any graph.
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One possible attack on the cycle double cover problem would be to show that there cannot exist a minimum counterexample, by proving that any graph contains a
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is a special case of a bridgeless graph, having the additional properties that every vertex has exactly three incident edges (that is, the graph is
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has a circular embedding onto a manifold. If so, the graph also has a cycle double cover, formed by the faces of the embedding.
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If a circular embedding exists, it might not be on a surface of minimal genus: Nguyen Huy Xuong described a 2-vertex-connected
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can only be covered by using the same cycle more than once, so this sort of duplication is allowed in a cycle double cover.
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Fleischner, Herbert (1976), "Eine gemeinsame Basis fĂĽr die
Theorie der Eulerschen Graphen und den Satz von Petersen",
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Kochol, Martin (2009a), "3-Regular non 3-edge-colorable graphs with polyhedral embeddings in orientable surfaces",
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Kochol, Martin (2009b), "Polyhedral embeddings of snarks in orientable surfaces",
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that together include each edge of the graph exactly twice. For instance, for any
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with girth greater than Îł cannot contain any of the configurations in the set
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The usual formulation of the cycle double cover conjecture asks whether every
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satisfying the condition of the cycle double cover conjecture is called a
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Jaeger, F. (1985), "A survey of the cycle double cover conjecture",
682:(1979), "Sums of circuits", in Bondy, J. A.; Murty, U.S.R. (eds.),
600:, North-Holland Mathematics Studies, vol. 27, pp. 1–12,
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Alternatively, strengthenings of the conjecture that involve
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Itai, A.; Rodeh, M. (1978), "Covering a graph by circuits",
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A stronger type of embedding than a circular embedding is a
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one of the original graph. On the other hand, if a vertex
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Personal correspondence with H. Fleischner (July 22,1987)
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Graph
Drawing 2008, Editors: I.G. Tollis, M. Patrignani
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are not strong enough to rule out the possibility that
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Kochol, Martin (1996), "Snarks without small cycles",
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conjectured that they do not exist, but Kochol (
718:(1973), "Polyhedral decomposition of cubic graphs",
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Annals of
Discrete Mathematics 27 – Cycles in Graphs
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316:none of whose circular embeddings lie on a torus.
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