Elsevier

Discrete Applied Mathematics

Volumes 190–191, 20 August 2015, Pages 163-168
Discrete Applied Mathematics

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Sharp bounds for the Chinese Postman Problem in 3-regular graphs and multigraphs

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dam.2015.03.017Get rights and content
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Abstract

The Chinese Postman Problem in a multigraph is the problem of finding a shortest closed walk traversing all the edges. In a (2r+1)-regular multigraph, the problem is equivalent to finding a smallest spanning subgraph in which all vertices have odd degree. In 1994, Kostochka and Tulai established a sharp upper bound for the solution. In this paper, we give simple proofs of their bounds for 3-regular graphs and 3-regular multigraphs and characterize when equality holds in those cases. We conjecture that a more specific construction characterizes equality for r2.

Keywords

Chinese Postman Problem
Regular graph
Parity subgraph
Balloon

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