On perfectly two-edge connected graphs

This paper studies the graphs for which the 2-edge connected spanning subgraph polytope is completely described by the trivial inequalities and the so-called cut inequalities. These graphs are called perfectly 2-edge connected. The class of perfectly 2-edge connected graphs contains for instance the class of series-parallel graphs. We introduce a new class of perfectly 2-edge connected graphs. We discuss some structural properties of graphs which are (minimally with respect to some reduction operations) nonperfectly 2-edge connected. Using this we give sufficient conditions for a graph to be perfectly 2-edge connected.