Equipartite gregarious 6- and 8-cycle systems

• Published in: Discrete mathematics Vol. 307; no. 13; pp. 1659 - 1667
• Main Authors: Billington, Elizabeth J., Smith, Benjamin R., Hoffman, D.G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 06.06.2007; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Combinatorics; Combinatorics. Ordered structures; Complete multipartite graph; Computer science; control theory; systems; Designs and configurations; Equipartite graph; Exact sciences and technology; Graph decomposition; Gregarious cycle; Information retrieval. Graph; Mathematics; Sciences and techniques of general use; Theoretical computing; Graph decomposition; Gregarious cycle; Equipartite graph; Complete multipartite graph; Design; Multipartite graph; Necessary and sufficient condition; Complete graph; Experimental design; Decomposition method; Cycle; System
• ISSN: 0012-365X; 1872-681X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.disc.2006.09.016

A k-cycle decomposition of a complete multipartite graph is said to be gregarious if each k-cycle in the decomposition has its vertices in k different partite sets. Equipartite gregarious 3-cycle systems are 3-GDDs, and necessary and sufficient conditions for their existence are known (see for instance the CRC Handbook of Combinatorial Designs, 1996, C.J. Colbourn, J.H. Dinitz (Eds.), Section III 1.3). The cases of equipartite and of almost equipartite 4-cycle systems were recently dealt with by Billington and Hoffman. Here, for both 6-cycles and for 8-cycles, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for existence of a gregarious cycle decomposition of the complete equipartite graph K n ( a ) (with n parts, n ⩾ 6 or n ⩾ 8 , of size a).