Abstract
Let G be a graph and let s be a vertex of G. We consider the structure of the set of all lifts of two edges incident with s that preserve edge-connectivity. Mader proved that two mild hypotheses imply there is at least one pair that lifts, while Frank showed (with the same hypotheses) that there are at least \((\deg (s)-1)/2\) disjoint pairs that lift. We consider the lifting graph: its vertices are the edges incident with s, two being adjacent if they form a liftable pair. We have three main results, the first two with the same hypotheses as for Mader’s Theorem. (i) Let F be a subset of the edges incident with s. We show that F is independent in the lifting graph of G if and only if there is a single edge-cut C in G of size at most \(r+1\) containing all the edges in F, where r is the maximum number of edge-disjoint paths from a vertex (not s) in one component of \(G-C\) to a vertex (not s) in another component of \(G-C\). (ii) In the k-lifting graph, two edges incident with s are adjacent if their lifting leaves the resulting graph with the property that any two vertices different from s are joined by k pairwise edge-disjoint paths. If both \(\deg (s)\) and k are even, then the k-lifting graph is a connected complete multipartite graph. In all other cases, there are at most two components. If there are exactly two components, then each component is a complete multipartite graph. If \(\deg (s)\) is odd and there are two components, then one component is a single vertex. (iii) Huck proved that if k is odd and G is \((k+1)\)-edge-connected, then G is weakly k-linked (that is, for any k pairs \(\{x_i,y_i\}\), there are k edge-disjoint paths \(P_i\), with \(P_i\) joining \(x_i\) and \(y_i\)). We use our results to extend a slight weakening of Huck’s theorem to some infinite graphs: if k is odd, every \((k+2)\)-edge-connected, locally finite, 1-ended, infinite graph is weakly k-linked.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aharoni, R., Thomassen, C.: Infinite, highly connected digraphs with no two arc-disjoint spanning trees. J. Graph Theory 13, 71–74 (1989)
Chan, Y.H., Fung, W.S., Lau, L.C., Yung, C.K.: Degree bounded network design with metric costs. SIAM J. Comput. 40(4), 953–980 (2011)
Frank, A.: On a theorem of Mader. Ann. Disc. Math. 101, 49–57 (1992)
Huck, A.: A sufficient condition for graphs to be weakly \(k\)-linked. Graphs Comb. 7, 323–351 (1991)
Mader, W.: A reduction method for edge-connectivity in graphs. Ann. Disc. Math. 3, 145–164 (1978)
Okamura, H.: Every \(4k\)-edge-connected graph is weakly-\(3k\)-linked. Graphs Comb. 6, 179185 (1990)
Thomassen, C.: 2-linked graphs. Eur. J. Comb. 1, 371–378 (1980)
Thomassen C.: Orientations of infinite graphs with prescribed edge-connectivity. Combinatorica (2016). doi:10.1007/s00493-015-3173-0
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Some of this work was done by the R. Bruce Richter and Carsten Thomassen while at the Institut Mittag-Leffler (Djursholm, Sweden). Some of this work was done during a visit by the Seongmin Ok to the University of Waterloo.
R. Bruce Richter: Supported in part by NSERC.
Carsten Thomassen: Supported in part by ERC Advanced Grant GRACOL.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ok, S., Richter, R.B. & Thomassen, C. Liftings in Finite Graphs and Linkages in Infinite Graphs with Prescribed Edge-Connectivity. Graphs and Combinatorics 32, 2575–2589 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00373-016-1724-9
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00373-016-1724-9