On the Complexity of Determining Whether There is a Unique Hamiltonian Cycle or Path

Olivier Hudry 1, Antoine Lobstein 2
1 LTCI, Télécom ParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay 46 rue Barrault, 75634 Paris Cedex 13 – France
2Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, UMR 8623, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay Bâtiment 650 Ada Lovelace, 91405 Orsay Cedex – France

Abstract

The decision problems of the existence of a Hamiltonian cycle or of a Hamiltonian path in a given graph, and of the existence of a truth assignment satisfying a given Boolean formula C, are well-known NP-complete problems. Here we study the problems of the uniqueness of a Hamiltonian cycle or path in an undirected, directed or oriented graph, and show that they have the same complexity, up to polynomials, as the problem U-SAT of the uniqueness of an assignment satisfying C. As a consequence, these Hamiltonian problems are NP-hard and belong to the class DP, like U-SAT.

Keywords: Graph Theory, Hamiltonian Cycle, Hamiltonian Path, Traveling Salesman, Complexity Theory, NP-Hardness, Decision Problems, Plyromial Reduction, Uniqueness of Solution, Boolean Satisfiability Problems