Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Mathematics

Committee Chair

Hong-Jian Lai

Committee Co-Chair

John Goldwasser

Committee Member

John Goldwasser

Committee Member

Guodong Guo

Committee Member

Rong Luo

Committee Member

Kevin Milans

Abstract

A graph is supereulerian if it has a spanning closed trail. Pulleyblank in 1979 showed that determining whether a graph is supereulerian, even when restricted to planar graphs, is NP-complete. Let $\kappa'(G)$ and $\delta(G)$ be the edge-connectivity and the minimum degree of a graph $G$, respectively. For integers $s \ge 0$ and $t \ge 0$, a graph $G$ is $(s,t)$-supereulerian if for any disjoint edge sets $X, Y \subseteq E(G)$ with $|X|\le s$ and $|Y|\le t$, $G$ has a spanning closed trail that contains $X$ and avoids $Y$. This dissertation is devoted to providing some results on $(s,t)$-supereulerian graphs and supereulerian hypergraphs.

In Chapter 2, we determine the value of the smallest integer $j(s,t)$ such that every $j(s,t)$-edge-connected graph is $(s,t)$-supereulerian as follows:

\[ j(s,t) = \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} \max\{4, t + 2\} & \mbox{ if $0 \le s \le 1$, or $(s,t) \in \{(2,0), (2,1), (3,0),(4,0)\}$,} \\ 5 & \mbox{ if $(s,t) \in \{(2,2), (3,1)\}$,} \\ s + t + \frac{1 - (-1)^s}{2} & \mbox{ if $s \ge 2$ and $s+t \ge 5$. } \end{array} \right. \]

As applications, we characterize $(s,t)$-supereulerian graphs when $t \ge 3$ in terms of edge-connectivities, and show that when $t \ge 3$, $(s,t)$-supereulerianicity is polynomially determinable.

In Chapter 3, for a subset $Y \subseteq E(G)$ with $|Y|\le \kappa'(G)-1$, a necessary and sufficient condition for $G-Y$ to be a contractible configuration for supereulerianicity is obtained. We also characterize the $(s,t)$-supereulerianicity of $G$ when $s+t\le \kappa'(G)$. These results are applied to show that if $G$ is $(s,t)$-supereulerian with $\kappa'(G)=\delta(G)\ge 3$, then for any permutation $\alpha$ on the vertex set $V(G)$, the permutation graph $\alpha(G)$ is $(s,t)$-supereulerian if and only if $s+t\le \kappa'(G)$.

For a non-negative integer $s\le |V(G)|-3$, a graph $G$ is $s$-Hamiltonian if the removal of any $k\le s$ vertices results in a Hamiltonian graph. Let $i_{s,t}(G)$ and $h_s(G)$ denote the smallest integer $i$ such that the iterated line graph $L^{i}(G)$ is $(s,t)$-supereulerian and $s$-Hamiltonian, respectively. In Chapter 4, for a simple graph $G$, we establish upper bounds for $i_{s,t}(G)$ and $h_s(G)$. Specifically, the upper bound for the $s$-Hamiltonian index $h_s(G)$ sharpens the result obtained by Zhang et al. in [Discrete Math., 308 (2008) 4779-4785].

Harary and Nash-Williams in 1968 proved that the line graph of a graph $G$ is Hamiltonian if and only if $G$ has a dominating closed trail, Jaeger in 1979 showed that every 4-edge-connected graph is supereulerian, and Catlin in 1988 proved that every graph with two edge-disjoint spanning trees is a contractible configuration for supereulerianicity. In Chapter 5, utilizing the notion of partition-connectedness of hypergraphs introduced by Frank, Kir\'aly and Kriesell in 2003, we generalize the above-mentioned results of Harary and Nash-Williams, of Jaeger and of Catlin to hypergraphs by characterizing hypergraphs whose line graphs are Hamiltonian, and showing that every 2-partition-connected hypergraph is a contractible configuration for supereulerianicity.

Applying the adjacency matrix of a hypergraph $H$ defined by Rodr\'iguez in 2002, let $\lambda_2(H)$ be the second largest adjacency eigenvalue of $H$. In Chapter 6, we prove that for an integer $k$ and a $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ of order $n$ with $r\ge 4$ even, the minimum degree $\delta\ge k\ge 2$ and $k\neq r+2$, if $\lambda_2(H)\le (r-1)\delta-\frac{r^2(k-1)n}{4(r+1)(n-r-1)}$, then $H$ is $k$-edge-connected. %$\kappa'(H)\ge k$.

Some discussions are displayed in the last chapter. We extend the well-known Thomassen Conjecture that every 4-connected line graph is Hamiltonian to hypergraphs. The $(s,t)$-supereulerianicity of hypergraphs is another interesting topic to be investigated in the future.

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