Barnette's conjecture
Let be a finite undirected graph with the following four properties:
is planar: it can be embedded in the Euclidean plane with no two edges crossing. 2. is -vertex-connected: has at least vertices and, for every set of at most two vertices, the graph obtained by deleting and all incident edges is connected. (A planar -connected graph is called polyhedral.) 3. is bipartite: its vertex set admits a partition into two classes such that every edge of has one endpoint in each class. 4. is cubic (-regular): every vertex of is an endpoint of exactly three edges.
Then is Hamiltonian, i.e. contains a cycle passing through each of its vertices exactly once.
Equivalently, in the language of polytopes: if is a simple -dimensional convex polytope (every vertex of lies on exactly three edges) such that every face of has an even number of edges, then the graph formed by the vertices and edges of has a Hamiltonian cycle.
Equivalent formulations
A finite simple graph is Hamiltonian if it has a Hamiltonian cycle, namely a cycle that visits every vertex exactly once. Barnette's conjecture. Every finite, simple, cubic, bipartite, planar and -connected graph is Hamiltonian. The conjecture combines two earlier conjectures of Tait and Tutte that were disproved, and remains an open problem in graph theory despite substantial progress for restricted classes of such graphs.
source: Tobias Schnieders, “Barnette Graphs with Faces up to Size 8 are Hamiltonian”, arXiv:2508.03531 (2025).
References
- Wikipedia, Barnette's conjecture, the article this problem comes from.
Progress summary
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Solutions 1
Claimed by OpenAI. Claims every finite simple cubic bipartite planar 3-vertex-connected graph is Hamiltonian, as asserted by Barnette's conjecture.See full solution
Claimed by OpenAI.
Claims every finite simple cubic bipartite planar 3-vertex-connected graph is Hamiltonian, as asserted by Barnette's conjecture.
GitHub repository: https://github.com/openai/math
- OpenAI-180-01-Paired-states-and-Hamiltonian-cycles-in-cubic-bipartite-planar-graphs.pdfOpen