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Cubic vertices in planar hypohamiltonian graphs
Author(s) -
Zamfirescu Carol T.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of graph theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.164
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1097-0118
pISSN - 0364-9024
DOI - 10.1002/jgt.22388
Subject(s) - combinatorics , mathematics , planar graph , polyhedral graph , vertex (graph theory) , cubic graph , wheel graph , outerplanar graph , graph , discrete mathematics , graph power , line graph , pathwidth , voltage graph
Thomassen showed in 1978 that every planar hypohamiltonian graph contains a cubic vertex. Equivalently, a planar graph with minimum degree at least 4 in which every vertex‐deleted subgraph is hamiltonian, must be itself hamiltonian. By applying work of Brinkmann and the author, we extend this result in three directions. We prove that (i) every planar hypohamiltonian graph contains at least four cubic vertices, (ii) every planar almost hypohamiltonian graph contains a cubic vertex, which is not the exceptional vertex (solving a problem of the author raised in J. Graph Theory [79 (2015) 63–81]), and (iii) every hypohamiltonian graph with crossing number 1 contains a cubic vertex. Furthermore, we settle a recent question of Thomassen by proving that asymptotically the ratio of the minimum number of cubic vertices to the order of a planar hypohamiltonian graph vanishes.