Caccetta–Häggkvist conjecture

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Let r,g∈Nr,g\in \mathbb{N}. A digraph DD has girth at least gg if its shortest directed cycle has length at least gg, and let δ+(D)\delta^+(D) denote its minimum out-degree. Caccetta–Häggkvist conjecture. Every digraph DD with

δ+(D)≥r\delta^+(D)\ge r

and girth at least gg contains at least

r(g−1)+1r(g-1)+1

vertices. This is a major open problem in extremal graph theory; it remains open even for g=4g=4, and its rr-regular special case is also unresolved.

References

Primary source

Raphael Steiner, “Openly disjoint cycles and directed tree-width of regular digraphs”, arXiv:2604.13700 (2026).

Additional references

30 papers in this index state this conjecture (2008–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2507.04581, arXiv:2412.20234, arXiv:2405.17797, arXiv:2404.03752, arXiv:2403.13571, arXiv:2311.12302, arXiv:2306.03493, arXiv:2212.05697, arXiv:2211.07897, arXiv:2211.03129, arXiv:2206.10733, arXiv:2110.11183, and 17 more.

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