FindHamiltonianCycle

FindHamiltonianCycle[g]

finds a Hamiltonian cycle in the graph g.

FindHamiltonianCycle[g,k]

finds at most k Hamiltonian cycles.

FindHamiltonianCycle[{vw,},]

uses rules vw to specify the graph g.

Details and Options

Background & Context

  • FindHamiltonianCycle attempts to find one or more distinct Hamiltonian cycles, also called Hamiltonian circuits, Hamilton cycles, or Hamilton circuits. Cycles are returned as a list of edge lists or as {} if none exist. A Hamiltonian cycle (more properly called a Hamiltonian circuit when the cycle is identified using an explicit path with particular endpoints) is a consecutive sequence of distinct edges such that the first and last edges coincide at their endpoints and in which each vertex appears exactly once. A Hamiltonian cycle is therefore a graph cycle of length , where is the number of nodes in the graph. Hamiltonian cycles are used to reconstruct genome sequences, to solve some games (most obviously the Icosian game), to find a knight's tour on a chessboard, and to find attractive circular embeddings for regular graphs. A graph possessing a Hamiltonian cycle is known as a Hamiltonian graph.
  • FindHamiltonianCycle[g,k] attempts to find k Hamiltonian cycles, where the count specification k may be omitted (in which case it is taken as 1), may be a positive integer, or may be All.
  • Finding a Hamiltonian cycle is an NP-complete problem. However, various heuristic algorithms exist that sometimes (but not always) can find Hamiltonian cycles very quickly. For this reason, simply permuting the vertices in a graph may give a different runtime for FindHamiltonianCycle.
  • A graph may be tested to see if it is Hamiltonian using HamiltonianGraphQ. FindShortestTour is another function that attempts to find a single Hamiltonian cycle on a graph (or a more generally specified set of vertices), with the advantage that it sometimes succeeds more quickly than FindHamiltonianCycle.
  • While Hamiltonian cycles in an -node graph correspond to cycles of length , a cycle of arbitrary length may be found using FindCycle. Hamiltonian cycles visit all vertices, but do not necessarily pass through each edge. A cycle that visits each edge exactly once is known as an Eulerian cycle and may be found using FindEulerianCycle.

Examples

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Basic Examples  (2)

Find a Hamiltonian cycle:

Show the cycle:

Find several Hamiltonian cycles:

Scope  (8)

FindHamiltonianCycle works with undirected graphs:

Directed graphs:

Multigraphs:

Mixed graphs:

Find several Hamiltonian cycles:

Use rules to specify the graph:

FindHamiltonianCycle returns an empty result for non-Hamiltonian graphs:

FindHamiltonianCycle works with large graphs:

Applications  (5)

Solve the Icosian game [MathWorld] by finding a Hamiltonian cycle along the edges of the dodecahedron:

On a labeled dodecahedron, find Hamiltonian cycles that contain a given sequence of labels:

Obtain cycles containing the sequence B, C, P, N, M:

Highlight the cycles:

Find a sequence of moves by a knight chess piece that visits each square of an 8×8 chessboard exactly once:

A closed knight's tour:

Graph-based assembly of a circular genome "ATGGCGTGCA" with vertices as k-mers and edges as pairwise alignments:

Reconstruct the genome:

The Gray code of order is a Hamiltonian cycle of the hypercube graph :

Find all Hamiltonian cycles of :

Highlight the Gray code:

Properties & Relations  (5)

Use GraphData for an extensive collection of Hamiltonian graphs:

Non-Hamiltonian graphs:

Test whether a graph has a Hamiltonian cycle by using HamiltonianGraphQ:

Hamiltonian graphs are biconnected:

The line graph of a Hamiltonian graph has a Hamiltonian cycle:

The line graph of an Eulerian graph has a Hamiltonian cycle:

An undirected graph with vertices and minimal degree greater than has a Hamiltonian cycle:

A directed graph with vertices and minimum degree greater than has a Hamiltonian cycle:

Neat Examples  (1)

Find a Hamiltonian cycle:

Dynamically highlight a cycle:

Wolfram Research (2010), FindHamiltonianCycle, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/FindHamiltonianCycle.html (updated 2015).

Text

Wolfram Research (2010), FindHamiltonianCycle, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/FindHamiltonianCycle.html (updated 2015).

CMS

Wolfram Language. 2010. "FindHamiltonianCycle." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. Last Modified 2015. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/FindHamiltonianCycle.html.

APA

Wolfram Language. (2010). FindHamiltonianCycle. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/FindHamiltonianCycle.html

BibTeX

@misc{reference.wolfram_2023_findhamiltoniancycle, author="Wolfram Research", title="{FindHamiltonianCycle}", year="2015", howpublished="\url{https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/FindHamiltonianCycle.html}", note=[Accessed: 19-March-2024 ]}

BibLaTeX

@online{reference.wolfram_2023_findhamiltoniancycle, organization={Wolfram Research}, title={FindHamiltonianCycle}, year={2015}, url={https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/FindHamiltonianCycle.html}, note=[Accessed: 19-March-2024 ]}