Thomassen's conjecture on good vertex pairs in arc-strong digraphs

Let D=(V,A)D=(V,A) be a digraph. It is kk-arc-strong if DAD\setminus A^{\prime} remains strong for every subset AA(D)A^{\prime}\subseteq A(D) of size at most k1k-1. An out-branching of DD is a spanning oriented tree in which every vertex except its root has in-degree one, and an in-branching is a spanning oriented tree in which every vertex except its root has out-degree one. A good (u,v)(u,v)-pair is a pair of arc-disjoint out-branching and in-branching rooted at uu and vv, respectively.

Thomassen's conjecture. There exists an integer KK such that every KK-arc-strong digraph D=(V,A)D=(V,A) has a good (u,v)(u,v)-pair for every choice of u,vVu,v\in V.

This conjecture asks for a uniform arc-connectivity condition guaranteeing compatible branchings with arbitrary prescribed roots. The source gives no resolution, so the conjecture remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Jiangdong Ai, Yiming Hao, Zhaoxiang Li and Qi Shao, “Arc-disjoint in- and out-branchings in semicomplete split digraphs”, arXiv:2410.12575 (2024).

Additional references

7 papers in this index state this conjecture (2020–2024). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2309.06904, arXiv:2302.08283, arXiv:2302.06177, arXiv:2206.12092, arXiv:2012.03742, arXiv:2007.02834.

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