Sparsely intersecting perfect matchings in cubic graphs

In 1971, Fulkerson made a conjecture that every bridgeless cubic graph contains a family of six perfect matchings such that each edge belongs to exactly two of them; equivalently, such that no three of the matchings have an edge in common. In 1994, Fan and Raspaud proposed a weaker conjecture which requires only three perfect matchings with no edge in common. In this paper we discuss these and other related conjectures and make a step towards Fulkerson’s conjecture by proving the following result: Every bridgeless cubic graph which has a 2-factor with at most two odd circuits contains three perfect matchings with no edge in common.