The Chvátal–Erdös Condition for Group Connectivity in Graphs

Let G be a graph and A an abelian group with the identity element 0 and ${|A| \geq 4}$ . Let D be an orientation of G. The boundary of a function ${f: E(G) \rightarrow A}$ is the function ${\partial f: V(G) \rightarrow A}$ given by ${\partial f(v) = \sum_{e \in E^+(v)}f(e) - \sum_{e \in E^-(v)}f(e)}$ , where ${v \in V(G), E^+(v)}$ is the set of edges with tail at v and ${E^-(v)}$ is the set of edges with head at v. A graph G is A-connected if for every b: V(G) → A with ${\sum_{v \in V(G)} b(v) = 0}$ , there is a function ${f: E(G) \mapsto A-\{0\}}$ such that ${\partial f = b}$ . A graph G is A-reduced to G′ if G′ can be obtained from G by contracting A-connected subgraphs until no such subgraph left. Denote by ${\kappa^{\prime}(G)}$ and α(G) the edge connectivity and the independent number of G, respectively. In this paper, we prove that for a 2-edge-connected simple graph G, if ${\kappa^{\prime}(G) \geq \alpha(G)-1}$ , then G is A-connected or G can be A-reduced to one of the five specified graphs or G is one of the 13 specified graphs.     

Chvátal–Erdös Type Conditions for Hamiltonicity of Claw-Free Graphs

For a graph H, let \(\alpha (H)\) and \(\alpha ^{\prime }(H)\) denote the independence number and the matching number, respectively. Let \(k\ge 2\) and \(r>0\) be given integers. We prove that if H is a k-connected claw-free graph with \(\alpha (H)\le r\), then either H is Hamiltonian or the Ryjá c? ek’s closure \(cl(H)=L(G)\) where G can be contracted to a k-edge-connected \(K_3\)-free graph \(G_0^{\prime }\) with \(\alpha ^{\prime }(G_0^{\prime })\le r\) and \(|V(G_0^{\prime })|\le \max \{3r-5, 2r+1\}\) if \(k\ge 3\) or \(|V(G_0^{\prime })|\le \max \{4r-5, 2r+1\}\) if \(k=2\) and \(G_0^{\prime }\) does not have a dominating closed trail containing all the vertices that are obtained by contracting nontrivial subgraphs. As corollaries, we prove the following:

1. (a)
   A 2-connected claw-free graph H with \(\alpha (H)\le 3\) is either Hamiltonian or \(cl(H)=L(G)\) where G is obtained from \(K_{2,3}\) by adding at least one pendant edge on each degree 2 vertex;
    
2. (b)
   A 3-connected claw-free graph H with \(\alpha (H)\le 7\) is either Hamiltonian or \(cl(H)=L(G)\) where G is a graph with \(\alpha ^{\prime }(G)=7\) that is obtained from the Petersen graph P by adding some pendant edges or subdividing some edges of P.
    

Case (a) was first proved by Xu et al. [19]. Case (b) is an improvement of a result proved by Flandrin and Li [12]. For a given integer \(r>0\), the number of graphs of order at most \(\max \{4r-5, 2r+1\}\) is fixed. The main result implies that improvements to case (a) or (b) by increasing the value of r and by enlarging the collection of exceptional graphs can be obtained with the help of a computer. Similar results involved degree or neighborhood conditions are also discussed.

     

The Chen–Chvátal conjecture for metric spaces induced by distance-hereditary graphs

A classical theorem of Euclidean geometry asserts that any noncollinear set of $n$ points in the plane determines at least $n$ distinct lines. Chen and Chvátal conjectured a generalization of this result to arbitrary finite metric spaces, with a particular definition of lines in a metric space. We prove it for metric spaces induced by connected distance-hereditary graphs—a graph $G$ is called distance-hereditary if the distance between two vertices $u$ and $v$ in any connected induced subgraph $H$ of $G$ is equal to the distance between $u$ and $v$ in $G$.     

The Chvátal closure of generalized stable sets in bidirected graphs

We consider the set of integral solutions of $Ax⩽b$, $x⩾0$, where A is the edge-vertex incidence matrix of a bidirected graph. We characterize its corner polyhedron, i.e. the convex hull of the points satisfying all the constraints except the non-negativity of the basic variables. We show that the non-trivial inequalities necessary to describe this polyhedron can be derived as fractional Gomory cuts. It follows in particular that the split closure is equal to the Chvátal closure in this case.     

A Chvátal-Erdös condition for hamilton cycles in digraphs

We obtain a sufficient condition for a digraph to be hamiltonian in terms of its connectivity and independence number.     

Pancyclism in Chvátal-Erdös's graphs

LetG = (X, E) be a simple graph of ordern, of stability numberα and of connectivityk withα ≤ k. The Chvátal-Erdös's theorem [3] proves thatG is hamiltonian. We have investigated under these conditions what can be said about the existence of cycles of lengthl. We have obtained several results:

1. IfG ≠ K _k,k andG ≠ C ₅,G has aC _n?1 .
2. IfG ≠ C ₅, the girth ofG is at most four.
3. Ifα = 2 and ifG ≠ C ₄ orC ₅,G is pancyclic.
4. Ifα = 3 and ifG ≠ K _3,3,G has cycles of any length between four andn.
5. IfG has noC ₃,G has aC _n?2 .

     

Erdős–Gyárfás conjecture for some families of Cayley graphs

The Paul Erd?s and András Gyárfás conjecture states that every graph of minimum degree at least 3 contains a simple cycle whose length is a power of two. In this paper, we prove that the conjecture holds for Cayley graphs on generalized quaternion groups, dihedral groups, semidihedral groups and groups of order \(p^3\).     

The Erdös-Ko-Rado theorem for twisted Grassmann graphs

We present a “modern” approach to the Erdös-Ko-Rado theorem for Q-polynomial distance-regular graphs and apply it to the twisted Grassmann graphs discovered in 2005 by Van Dam and Koolen.     

Optimizing over the first Chvátal closure

How difficult is, in practice, to optimize exactly over the first Chvátal closure of a generic ILP? Which fraction of the integrality gap can be closed this way, e.g., for some hard problems in the MIPLIB library? Can the first-closure optimization be useful as a research (off-line) tool to guess the structure of some relevant classes of inequalities, when a specific combinatorial problem is addressed? In this paper we give answers to the above questions, based on an extensive computational analysis. Our approach is to model the rank-1 Chvátal-Gomory separation problem, which is known to be NP-hard, through a MIP model, which is then solved through a general-purpose MIP solver. As far as we know, this approach was never implemented and evaluated computationally by previous authors, though it gives a very useful separation tool for general ILP problems. We report the optimal value over the first Chvátal closure for a set of ILP problems from MIPLIB 3.0 and 2003. We also report, for the first time, the optimal solution of a very hard instance from MIPLIB 2003, namely nsrand-ipx, obtained by using our cut separation procedure to preprocess the original ILP model. Finally, we describe a new class of ATSP facets found with the help of our separation procedure.     

Chvátal closures for mixed integer programming problems

Chvátal introduced the idea of viewing cutting planes as a system for proving that every integral solution of a given set of linear inequalities satisfies another given linear inequality. This viewpoint has proven to be very useful in many studies of combinatorial and integer programming problems. The basic ingredient in these cutting-plane proofs is that for a polyhedronP and integral vectorw, if max(wx|x P, wx integer} =t, thenwx t is valid for all integral vectors inP. We consider the variant of this step where the requirement thatwx be integer may be replaced by the requirement that be integer for some other integral vector . The cutting-plane proofs thus obtained may be seen either as an abstraction of Gomory's mixed integer cutting-plane technique or as a proof version of a simple class of the disjunctive cutting planes studied by Balas and Jeroslow. Our main result is that for a given polyhedronP, the set of vectors that satisfy every cutting plane forP with respect to a specified subset of integer variables is again a polyhedron. This allows us to obtain a finite recursive procedure for generating the mixed integer hull of a polyhedron, analogous to the process of repeatedly taking Chvátal closures in the integer programming case. These results are illustrated with a number of examples from combinatorial optimization. Our work can be seen as a continuation of that of Nemhauser and Wolsey on mixed integer cutting planes.Supported by Sonderforschungsbereich 303 (DFG) and by NSF Grant Number ECS-8611841.Supported by NSF Grant Number ECS-8418392 and Sonderforschungsbereich 303 (DFG), Institut für Ökonometrie und Operations Research, Universität Bonn, FR Germany.     

On the Chvátal–Gomory closure of a compact convex set

In this paper, we show that the Chvátal–Gomory closure of any compact convex set is a rational polytope. This resolves an open question of Schrijver (Ann Discret Math 9:291–296, 1980) for irrational polytopes, and generalizes the same result for the case of rational polytopes (Schrijver in Ann Discret Math 9:291–296, 1980), rational ellipsoids (Dey and Vielma in IPCO XIV, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6080. Springer, Berlin, pp 327–340, 2010) and strictly convex bodies (Dadush et al. in Math Oper Res 36:227–239, 2011).     

Further discrepancy bounds and an Erdös–Turán–Koksma inequality for hybrid sequences

We consider hybrid sequences, that is, sequences in a multidimensional unit cube that are composed from lower-dimensional sequences of two different types. We establish nontrivial deterministic discrepancy bounds for five kinds of hybrid sequences as well as a new version of the Erdös–Turán–Koksma inequality which is suitable for hybrid sequences.