Some results on the structure of multipoles in the study of snarks (Q2260618)

Summary: Multipoles are the pieces we obtain by cutting some edges of a cubic graph in one or more points. As a result of the cut, a multipole \(M\) has vertices attached to a dangling edge with one free end, and isolated edges with two free ends. We refer to such free ends as semiedges, and to isolated edges as free edges. Every 3-edge-coloring of a multipole induces a coloring or state of its semiedges, which satisfies the parity lemma. Multipoles have been extensively used in the study of snarks, that is, cubic graphs which are not 3-edge-colorable. Some results on the states and structure of the so-called color complete and color closed multipoles are presented. In particular, we give lower and upper linear bounds on the minimum order of a color complete multipole, and compute its exact number of states. Given two multipoles \(M_1\) and \(M_2\) with the same number of semiedges, we say that \(M_1\) is reducible to \(M_2\) if the state set of \(M_2\) is a non-empty subset of the state set of \(M_1\) and \(M_2\) has less vertices than \(M_1\). The function \(v(m)\) is defined as the maximum number of vertices of an irreducible multipole with \(m\) semiedges. The exact values of ~\(v(m)\) are only known for \(m\leq 5\). We prove that tree and cycle multipoles are irreducible and, as a byproduct, that \(v(m)\) has a linear lower bound.