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Decomposition of Complete Tripartite Graphs into Short Cycles

Arputha Jose. T.1, Sampath Kumar S.1, Cecily Sahai C.1
1Department of Mathematics, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, Chennai – 603110, India

Abstract

For a graph \( G \) and for non-negative integers \( p, q \) and \( r \), the triplet \( (p, q, r) \) is said to be an admissible triplet, if \( 3p + 4q + 6r = |E(G)| \). If \( G \) admits a decomposition into \( p \) cycles of length \( 3 \), \( q \) cycles of length \( 4 \), and \( r \) cycles of length \( 6 \) for every admissible triplet \( (p, q, r) \), then we say that \( G \) has a \( \{C_{3}^{p}, C_{4}^{q}, C_{6}^{r}\} \)-decomposition. In this paper, the necessary conditions for the existence of \( \{C_{3}^{p}, C_{4}^{q}, C_{6}^{r}\} \)-decomposition of \( K_{\ell, m, n}(\ell \leq m \leq n) \) are proved to be sufficient. This affirmatively answers the problem raised in \emph{Decomposing complete tripartite graphs into cycles of lengths \( 3 \) and \( 4 \), Discrete Math. 197/198 (1999), 123-135}. As a corollary, we deduce the main results of \emph{Decomposing complete tripartite graphs into cycles of lengths \( 3 \) and \( 4 \), Discrete Math., 197/198, 123-135 (1999)} and \emph{Decompositions of complete tripartite graphs into cycles of lengths \( 3 \) and \( 6 \), Austral. J. Combin., 73(1), 220-241 (2019)}.

Keywords: Cycle decompositions, Latin square, Complete tripartite graphs