Jones' conjecture

Recomm. for undergrads: no
Posted by: cmlee
on: October 9th, 2007

For a graph $ G $, let $ cp(G) $ denote the cardinality of a maximum cycle packing (collection of vertex disjoint cycles) and let $ cc(G) $ denote the cardinality of a minimum feedback vertex set (set of vertices $ X $ so that $ G-X $ is acyclic).

Conjecture   For every planar graph $ G $, $ cc(G)\leq 2cp(G) $.

In [KLL], the authors mention that there exists a family of nonplanar graphs for which $ cc(G) = \Theta( cp(G) \log cp(G) ) $, so no such result could hold for general graphs. They also point out that the conjecture is tight for wheels, and they prove it for the special case of outerplanar graphs.

Bibliography

*[KLL] Ton Kloks, Chuan-Min Lee, and Jiping Liu, New Algorithms for $ k $-Face Cover, $ k $-Feedback Vertex Set, and $ k $-Disjoint Cycles on Plane and Planar Graphs, in Proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG2002), LNCS 2573, pp. 282--295, 2002.


* indicates original appearance(s) of problem.

Proved for subcubic planar

Proved for subcubic planar graphs by Marthe Bonamy, François Dross, Tomáš Masařík, Wojciech Nadara, Marcin Pilipczuk, Michał Pilipczuk [https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01570].

Why Jones'?

Does anyone know why this is called Jones' Conjecture?

Reply: Why Jones'?

I am Jones. My Taiwanese name is Chuan-Min Lee. This conjecture came up when I was working on it with Ton Kloks and Jiping Liu. I used the name "Jones" instead of my Taiwanese name for ease of communication.

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