El-Zahar's cycle-cover conjecture

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Let GG be an nn-vertex graph, and let n1,…,nr≥3n_1,\dots,n_r\geq 3 be integers satisfying

∑i=1rni=n.\sum_{i=1}^{r}n_i=n.

El-Zahar's conjecture. If

δ(G)≥∑i=1r⌈ni/2⌉,\delta(G) \geq \sum_{i=1}^{r} \lceil n_i/2 \rceil,

then GG contains rr vertex-disjoint cycles with lengths n1,…,nrn_1,\dots,n_r. This is the classical graph analogue motivating the paper's results on cycle factors in digraphs; the conjecture provides a minimum-degree condition for covering a graph with prescribed vertex-disjoint cycle lengths.

References

Primary source

Theodore Molla and Andrew Treglown, “Cycle tilings and H-factors in directed graphs”, arXiv:2602.13737 (2026).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2024–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2409.20535.

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