Hamiltonian cycles in 2-connected claw-free-graphs

M. Matthews and D. Sumner have proved that of G is a 2-connected claw-free graph of order n such that δ ≧ (n ? 2)/3, then G is hamiltonian. We prove that the bound for the minimum degree δ can be reduced to n/4 under the additional condition that G is not in F, where F is the set of all graphs defined as follows: any graph H in F can be decomposed into three vertex disjoint subgraphs H₁, H₂, H₃ such that , where u_i, v_i ? V(H_i), u_j v_j ? V(H_j) 1 ? i ≦ j ≦ 3. Examples are given to show that the bound n/4 is sharp. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.