Ore-type conditions for existence of a jellyfish in a graph

Jaehoon Kim, Alexandr Kostochka, Ruth Luo

Published 2024-03-31, updated 2024-10-14Version 2

The famous Dirac's Theorem states that for each $n\geq 3$ every $n$-vertex graph $G$ with minimum degree $\delta(G)\geq n/2$ has a hamiltonian cycle. When $\delta(G)< n/2$, this cannot be guaranteed, but the existence of some other specific subgraphs can be provided. Gargano, Hell, Stacho and Vaccaro proved that every connected $n$-vertex graph $G$ with $\delta(G)\geq (n-1)/3$ contains a spanning {\em spider}, i.e., a spanning tree with at most one vertex of degree at least $3$. Later, Chen, Ferrara, Hu, Jacobson and Liu proved the stronger (and exact) result that for $n\geq 56$ every connected $n$-vertex graph $G$ with $\delta(G)\geq (n-2)/3$ contains a spanning {\em broom}, i.e., a spanning spider obtained by joining the center of a star to an endpoint of a path. They also showed that a $2$-connected graph $G$ with $\delta(G)\geq (n-2)/3$ and some additional properties contains a spanning {\em jellyfish} which is a graph obtained by gluing the center of a star to a vertex in a cycle disjoint from that star. Note that every spanning jellyfish contains a spanning broom. The goal of this paper is to prove an exact Ore-type bound which guarantees the existence of a spanning jellyfish: We prove that if $G$ is a $2$-connected graph on $n$ vertices such that every non-adjacent pair of vertices $(u,v)$ satisfies $d(u) + d(v) \geq \frac{2n-3}{3}$, then $G$ has a spanning jellyfish. As corollaries, we obtain strengthenings of two results by Chen et al.: a minimum degree condition guaranteeing the existence of a spanning jellyfish, and an Ore-type sufficient condition for the existence of a spanning broom. The corollaries are sharp for infinitely many $n$. One of the main ingredients of our proof is a modification of the Hopping Lemma due to Woodall.