Some unsolved problems on cycles

Chunhui Lai, Mingjing Liu

Published 2011-10-06, updated 2013-06-12Version 3

Hajos' conjecture that every simple even graph on $n$ vertices can be decomposed into at most $(n-1)/2$ cycles (see L. Lovasz, On covering of graphs, in: P. Erdos, G.O.H. Katona (Eds.), Theory of Graphs, Academic Press, New York, 1968, pp. 231 - 236). Let $f(n)$ be the maximum number of edges in a graph on $n$ vertices in which no two cycles have the same length. P. Erdos raised the problem of determining $f(n)$ (see J.A. Bondy and U.S.R. Murty, Graph Theory with Applications (Macmillan, New York, 1976), p.247, Problem 11). Given a graph $H$, what is the maximum number of edges of a graph with $n$ vertices not containing $H$ as a subgraph? This number is denoted $ex(n,H)$, and is known as the Turan number. P. Erdos conjectured that there exists a positive constant $c$ such that $ex(n,C_{2k})\geq cn^{1+1/k}$(see P. Erdos, Some unsolved problems in graph theory and combinatorial analysis, Combinatorial Mathematics and its Applications (Proc. Conf., Oxford, 1969), pp. 97--109, Academic Press, London, 1971). This paper summarizes some results on these problems and the conjectures that relate to these. We do not think Haj\'{o}s conjecture is true.