Chords of longest cycles passing through a specified small set

TL;DR

This paper proves that in certain highly connected graphs with specified small sets, the longest cycles passing through these sets always contain chords, extending previous results on cycle structure in such graphs.

Contribution

It generalizes Thomassen's and Zhang's results by establishing conditions under which longest cycles through specific small sets must have chords in various classes of graphs.

Findings

Longest cycles containing specified small sets have chords in 2-connected cubic graphs.

Some longest cycles containing a specified edge in 3-connected graphs with minimum degree at least 4 have chords.

In 3-connected planar graphs with minimum degree at least 4, longest cycles through certain sets always contain chords.

Abstract

A long-standing conjecture of Thomassen says that every longest cycle of a $3$-connected graph has a chord. Thomassen (2018) proved that if $G$ is $2$-connected and cubic, then any longest cycle must have a chord. He also showed that if $G$ is a $3$-connected graph with minimum degree at least $4$, then some of the longest cycles in $G$ must have a chord. Zhang (1987) proved that if $G$ is a $3$-connected simple planar graph which is 3-regular or has minimum degree at least $4$, then every longest cycle of $G$ must have a chord. Recently, Li and Liu showed that if $G$ is a $2$-connected cubic graph and $x, y$ are two distinct vertices of $G$, then every longest $(x,y)$-path of $G$ contains at least one internal vertex whose neighbors are all in the path. In this paper, we study chords of longest cycles passing through a specified small set and generalize Thomassen's and Zhang's above results by proving the following results. (i) Let $G$ be a $2$-connected cubic graph and $S$ be a specified set consisting of an edge plus a vertex. Then every longest cycle of $G$ containing $S$ must have a chord. (ii) Let $G$ be a $3$-connected graph with minimum degree at least $4$ and $e$ be a specified edge of $G$. Then some longest cycle of $G$ containing $e$ must have a chord. (iii) Let $G$ be a $3$-connected planar graph with minimum degree at least $4$. Suppose $S$ is a specified set consisting of either three vertices or an edge plus a vertex. Then every longest cycle of $G$ containing $S$ must have a chord. We also extend the above-mentioned result of Li and Liu for $2$-connected cubic graphs.