Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-graph-theory-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/3/c/i/solution
Past exam of the graph theory course of the University of Oxford 2023 3 c i Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Add two new vertices to , joining to every vertex of and to every vertex of , with no other new edges. The vertices are nonadjacent. Suppose has . Since is a k-connected graph, is a connected graph. Both and are nonempty because each original set has cardinality . Choose and ; a graph path between them in extends to an – graph path avoiding .
Consequently no fewer than vertices can form an – vertex separator. By Menger's theorem, there are at least internally vertex-disjoint paths from to . There cannot be more than , since has only neighbours.
Remove from these graph paths. The resulting graph paths in start at distinct vertices of , end at distinct vertices of , and are pairwise vertex-disjoint paths: any shared vertex would have been an internal vertex common to two of the original graph paths. Because there are exactly graph paths, they use every vertex of and as an endpoint. None can pass through another terminal internally, since that terminal already occurs as an endpoint of one of the vertex-disjoint paths. Thus there are vertex-disjoint paths from to , with some pairing of the endpoints. This is also an immediate application of the Set version of Menger theorem.
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