Skip to main content
Log in

Finding coherent cyclic orders in strong digraphs

  • Published:
Combinatorica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A cyclic order in the vertex set of a digraph is said to be coherent if any arc is contained in a directed cycle whose winding number is one. This notion plays a key role in the proof by Bessy and Thomassé (2004) of a conjecture of Gallai (1964) on covering the vertex set by directed cycles. This paper presents an efficient algorithm for finding a coherent cyclic order in a strongly connected digraph, based on a theorem of Knuth (1974). With the aid of ear decomposition, the algorithm runs in O(nm) time, where n is the number of vertices and m is the number of arcs. This is as fast as testing if a given cyclic order is coherent.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. S. Bessy and S. Thomassé: Three min-max theorems concerning cyclic orders of strong digraphs, in Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization, D. Bienstock and G. Nemhauser, eds., LNCS 3064, Springer-Verlag, 2004, pp. 132–138.

  2. D. E. Knuth: Wheels within wheels, J. Combinatorial Theory, Ser. B 16 (1974), 42–46.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. J. B. Orlin: A faster strongly polynomial minimum cost flow algorithm, Oper. Res. 41 (1993), 338–350.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. A. Schrijver: Combinatorial Optimization — Polyhedra and Efficiency, Springer-Verlag, 2003.

  5. A. Sebő: Minmax relations for cyclically ordered digraphs, J. Combinatorial Theory, Ser. B 97(4) (2007), 518–552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Satoru Iwata.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Iwata, S., Matsuda, T. Finding coherent cyclic orders in strong digraphs. Combinatorica 28, 83–88 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00493-008-2305-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00493-008-2305-1

Mathematics Subject Classification (2000)

Navigation