Transversal Hamilton paths and cycles

TL;DR

This paper establishes minimum degree conditions for the existence of transversal Hamilton paths and cycles in collections of graphs sharing the same vertex set, extending classical Hamiltonian results to a transversal setting.

Contribution

It provides the first minimum degree threshold for transversal Hamilton paths and characterizes collections without such paths or cycles near the threshold.

Findings

Minimum degree $rac{n-1}{2}$ guarantees transversal Hamilton paths when $n=m+1$.

Characterization of graph collections with minimum degree $rac{n}{2}-1$ lacking transversal Hamilton cycles.

Extension of Dirac's theorem and stability results to the transversal graph setting.

Abstract

Given a collection $\mathcal{G} =\{G_1,G_2,\dots,G_m\}$ of graphs on the common vertex set $V$ of size $n$, an $m$-edge graph $H$ on the same vertex set $V$ is transversal in $\mathcal{G}$ if there exists a bijection $\varphi :E(H)\rightarrow [m]$ such that $e \in E(G_{\varphi(e)})$ for all $e\in E(H)$. Denote $\delta(\mathcal{G}):=\operatorname*{min}\left\{\delta(G_i): i\in [m]\right\}$. In this paper, we first establish a minimum degree condition for the existence of transversal Hamilton paths in $\mathcal{G}$: if $n=m+1$ and $\delta(\mathcal{G})\geq \frac{n-1}{2}$, then $\mathcal{G}$ contains a transversal Hamilton path. This solves a problem proposed by [Li, Li and Li, J. Graph Theory, 2023]. As a continuation of the transversal version of Dirac's theorem [Joos and Kim, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc., 2020] and the stability result for transversal Hamilton cycles [Cheng and Staden, arXiv:2403.09913v1], our second result characterizes all graph collections with minimum degree at least $\frac{n}{2}-1$ and without transversal Hamilton cycles. We obtain an analogous result for transversal Hamilton paths. The proof is a combination of the stability result for transversal Hamilton paths or cycles, transversal blow-up lemma, along with some structural analysis.