2

Let $G=(V,E)$ be a directed graph. I am interested in a "relaxed" version of the HamCycle problem.

In my first case, the degree of each vertex is exactly 6, such that: 3 are outgoing edges and 3 are ingoing edges, for every vertex in $V$.

I would like to check whether a HamCycle exists in such a graph. I believe it is still NP-Hard, yet not exactly sure on the details. My initial hunch was to perform a reduction from $3SAT$, sort of similar to $HamCycle$, but not exactly sure, since the degree is $6$, each $3$ ingoing and $3$ outgoing, so maybe $3SAT$ wouldn't work.

The second case was when the indegree and outdegree are exactly $2$, but I think it will be clearer after the first case.

Eric_
  • 535
  • 2
  • 13

1 Answers1

1

I believe Hamiltonian Cycle is still NP-hard on graphs where every vertex has in-degree 2 and out-degree 2. Assuming I haven't made a dumb mistake, the standard reduction from 3SAT seems easy to tweak so that it constructs a graph of this property.

Indeed, the standard reduction almost has this property. For each variable, we have a gadget with $3m+3$ nodes, where $m$ counts the number of clauses in the 3CNF formula $\varphi$. Each of those nodes has in-degree 2 and out-degree 2. Then for each clause, we have a node $c$, which has in-degree 1 and out-degree 1, and has a connection from the $i$th node in each gadget and to the $i+1$th node in each gadget. So the only problem are the nodes for the clauses.

We can tweak this to introduce two nodes $c',c''$ for each clause. We have a connection from the $i$th node in each gadget to both $c',c''$; from $c',c''$ to the $i+1$th node; and edges $c\to c'$, $c'\to c$. This ensures that each $c,c'$ have in-degree 2 and out-degree 2. Moreover, you can verify that the reduction still works.

I'll leave it to you to check whether the standard reduction can be tweaked so every node has in-degree 3 and out-degree 3.

Related: Hamiltonian cycle is known to be NP-complete even for $k$-regular graphs, for all $k\ge 3$. See https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/1651/5038.

D.W.
  • 167,959
  • 22
  • 232
  • 500