On Orthogonal Double Covers of \(K_n\)

BERNHARD GANTER1, Hans-Dietrich O.F.GRONAU2, RONALD C.MULLIN 3
1Technische Universitat Dresden Institut fiir Algebra Mommeensir. 13, 01062 Dresden, Germany
2 Universitat Rostock Fachbereich Mathematik Universitatsplatz 1, 18051 Rostock, Germany
3University of Waterloo Department of Combinatorics & Optimization Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

Abstract

An orthogonal double cover of the complete graph \(K_n\) is a collection of \(n\) spanning subgraphs \(G_1, G_2, \ldots, G_n$ of \(K_n\) such that every edge of \(K_n\) belongs to exactly 2 of the \(G_i\)’s and every pair of \(G_i\)s intersect in exactly one edge.
It is proved that an orthogonal double cover exists for all \(n \geq 4\), where the \(G_i\)’s consist of short cycles; this result also proves a conjecture of Chung and West.