Tutte's three nowhere-zero flow conjectures

Let GG be a graph. A nowhere-zero Zk\mathbb{Z}_k-flow is a flow whose values lie in Zk\mathbb{Z}_k and are nonzero on every edge. The graph is rr-edge-connected if every edge cut has size at least rr.

Tutte's three flow conjectures. The following three statements all hold:

  • Every 22-edge-connected graph has a nowhere-zero Z5\mathbb{Z}_5-flow.
  • Every 22-edge-connected graph with no Petersen minor has a nowhere-zero Z4\mathbb{Z}_4-flow.
  • Every 44-edge-connected graph has a nowhere-zero Z3\mathbb{Z}_3-flow.

Despite partial results, all three conjectures remain open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Daniel W. Cranston, Jiaao Li, Bo Su, Zhouningxin Wang and Ningyan Xu, “Reconfiguration of Nowhere-zero Flows”, arXiv:2606.24685 (2026).

Additional references

29 papers in this index state this conjecture (2002–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2603.24175, arXiv:2602.21526, arXiv:2601.12036, arXiv:2512.18923, arXiv:2510.22234, arXiv:2505.07002, arXiv:2502.01451, arXiv:2405.16586, arXiv:2311.04337, arXiv:2305.19050, arXiv:2304.14231, arXiv:2212.10757, and 16 more.

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