A note on packing paths in planar graphs

Seymour (1981) proved that the cut criterion is necessary and sufficient for the solvability of the edge-disjoint paths problem when the union of the supply graph and the demand graph is planar and Eulerian. When only planarity is required, Middendorf and Pfeiffer (1993) proved the problem to be NP-complete. For this case, Korach and Penn (1992) proved that the cut criterion is sufficient for the existence of a near-complete packing of paths. Here we generalize this result by showing how a natural strengthening of the cut criterion yields better packings of paths.Analogously to Seymour's approach, we actually prove a theorem on packing cuts in an arbitrary graph and then the planar edge-disjoint paths case is obtained by planar dualization. The main result is derived from a theorem of Seb (1990) on the structure of ±1 weightings of a bipartite graph with no negative circuits.Research partially supported by the Hungarian National Foundation for Scientific Research Grants OTKA 2118 and 4271.     

A two-phase algorithm for the partial accessibility constrained vehicle routing problem

In the partial accessibility constrained vehicle routing problem, a route can be covered by two types of vehicles, i.e. truck or truck + trailer. Some customers are accessible by both vehicle types, whereas others solely by trucks. After introducing an integer programming formulation for the problem, we describe a two-phase heuristic method which extends a classical vehicle routing algorithm. Since it is necessary to solve a combinatorial problem that has some similarities with the generalized assignment problem, we propose an enumerative procedure in which bounds are obtained from a Lagrangian relaxation. The routine provides very encouraging results on a set of test problems.     

Homoclinic orbits on compact hypersufaces in 293-1293-1293-1, of restricted contact type

Consider a smooth Hamiltonian system in ^2N , , the energy surface ={x/H(x)=H(0)} being compact, and 0 being a hyperbolic equilibrium. We assume, moreover, that {0} is of restricted contact type. These conditions are symplectically invariant. By a variational method, we prove the existence of an orbit homoclinic, i.e. non-constant and doubly asymptotic, to 0.     

A regularity result for critical points of conformally invariant functionals

Let be an open set inR ² andI be a conformally invariant functional defined onH ¹(,R ^d ). Letu be a critical point ofI. We show that, ifu is apriori assumed to be bounded, thenu is smooth in , up to (ifu _| is smooth). This is a partial (positive) answer to a conjecture of S. Hildebrandt [13]. As an application, we establish a regularity result for weak solutions to the equation of surfaces of prescribed mean curvature in a three-dimensional compact riemannian manifold.     

Spectra of graphs and fractal dimensions II

This paper continues the study of exponentsd(x), d (x), d _R (x) andd (x) for graphG; and the nearest neighbor random walk {X _n } _nN onG, if the starting pointX ₀=x is fixed. These exponents are responsible for the geometric, resistance, diffusion and spectral properties of the graph. The main concern of this paper is the relation of these exponents to the spectral density of the transition matrix. A series of new exponentse, e ,e _R ,e are introduced by allowingx to vary along the vertices. The results suggest that the geometric and resistance properties of the graph are responsible for the diffusion speed on the graph.     

Covering with blocks in the non-symmetric case

Considering an infinite string of i.i.d. random letters drawn from a finite alphabet we define the cover timeW _n as the number of random letters needed until each pattern of lenghtn appears at least once as a substring. Sharp weak and a.s. limit results onW _n are known in the symmetric case, i.e., when the random letters are uniformly distributed over the alphabet. In this paper we determine the limit distribution ofW _n in the nonsymmetric case asn. Generalizations in terms of point processes are also proved.Dedicated to Endre Csáki on his 60th birthday.