Strictly critical snarks with girth or cyclic connectivity equal to 6
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: A snark – connected cubic graph with chromatic index 4 – is critical if the graph resulting from the removal of any pair of distinct adjacent vertices is 3-edge-colourable; it is bicritical if the same is true for any pair of distinct vertices. A snark is strictly critical if it is critical but not bicritical. Very little is known about strictly critical snarks. Computational evidence suggests that strictly critical snarks constitute a tiny minority of all critical snarks. Strictly critical snarks of order n exist if and only if n is even and at least 32, and for each such order there is at least one strictly critical snark with cyclic connectivity 4. A sparse infinite family of cyclically 5-connected strictly critical snarks is also known, but those with cyclic connectivity greater than 5 have not been discovered so far. In this paper we fill the gap by constructing cyclically 6-connected strictly critical snarks of each even order n ≥ 342 . In addition, we construct cyclically 5-connected strictly critical snarks of girth 6 for every even n ≥ 66 with n ≡ 2 ( mod 8 ) .
Source: Discrete Mathematics
Authors: Ján Mazák, Jozef Rajník, Martin Škoviera
Language: English
Subfield: Computational Theory and Mathematics
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,320
Awards: G2846944527, Výnimočné štruktúry v diskrétnej matematike, Výnimočné štruktúry v diskrétnej matematike: vlastnosti, konštrukcie a klasifikácie, G5068321180, Teória grafov v kontexte modernej matematiky, Kubické grafy a klasické hypotézy v teórii grafov, G829676567, Štruktúra kubických grafov - farbenia a faktory
OpenAlex ID: W4414977236