From one to many rainbow Hamiltonian cycles

TL;DR

This paper investigates conditions under which multiple Hamiltonian cycles or perfect matchings exist as transversals across subgraphs of a larger graph, extending classical results and demonstrating the abundance of such structures.

Contribution

It generalizes Thomassen's theorem on uniquely Hamiltonian graphs and extends Joos and Kim's result to show exponential numbers of Hamiltonian transversals under certain degree conditions.

Findings

Bounded the number of Hamiltonian transversals based on maximum degree.

Proved exponential lower bounds for Hamiltonian transversals in complete graphs.

Extended results to perfect matchings in similar settings.

Abstract

Given a graph $G$ and a family $\mathcal{G} = \{G_1,\ldots,G_n\}$ of subgraphs of $G$, a transversal of $\mathcal{G}$ is a pair $(T,\phi)$ such that $T \subseteq E(G)$ and $\phi: T \rightarrow [n]$ is a bijection satisfying $e \in G_{\phi(e)}$ for each $e \in T$. We call a transversal Hamiltonian if $T$ corresponds to the edge set of a Hamiltonian cycle in $G$. We show that, under certain conditions on the maximum degree of $G$ and the minimum degrees of the $G_i \in \mathcal{G}$, for every $\mathcal{G}$ which contains a Hamiltonian transversal, the number of Hamiltonian transversals contained in $\mathcal{G}$ is bounded below by a function of $G$'s maximum degree. This generalizes a theorem of Thomassen stating that, for $m \geq 300$, no $m$-regular graph is uniquely Hamiltonian. We also extend Joos and Kim's recent result that, if $G = K_n$ and each $G_i \in \mathcal{G}$ has minimum degree at least $\frac{n}{2}$, then $\mathcal{G}$ has a Hamiltonian transversal: we show that, in this setting, $\mathcal{G}$ has exponentially many Hamiltonian transversals. Finally, we prove analogues of both of these theorems for transversals which form perfect matchings of $G$.