Abstract. A fundamental theorem of Wilson states that, for every graph F , every sufficiently large F -divisible clique has an F -decomposition. Here a graph G is F -divisible if e(F ) divides e(G) and the greatest common divisor of the degrees of F divides the greatest common divisor of the degrees of G, and G has an F -decomposition if the edges of G can be covered by edge-disjoint copies of F . We extend this result to graphs G which are allowed to be far from complete. In particular, together with a result of Dross, our results imply that every sufficiently large K3-divisible graph of minimum degree at least 9n/10 + o(n) has a K3-decomposition. This significantly improves previous results towards the long-standing conjecture of Nash-Williams that every sufficiently large K3-divisible graph with minimum degree at least 3n/4 has a K3-decomposition. We also obtain the asymptotically correct minimum degree thresholds of 2n/3 + o(n) for the existence of a C4-decomposition, and of n/2 + o(n) for the existence of a C 2ℓ -decomposition, where ℓ ≥ 3. Our main contribution is a general 'iterative absorption' method which turns an approximate or fractional decomposition into an exact one. In particular, our results imply that in order to prove an asymptotic version of Nash-Williams' conjecture, it suffices to show that every K3-divisible graph with minimum degree at least 3n/4 + o(n) has an approximate K3-decomposition,
The iterative absorption method has recently led to major progress in the area of (hyper-)graph decompositions. Amongst other results, a new proof of the Existence conjecture for combinatorial designs, and some generalizations, was obtained. Here, we illustrate the method by investigating triangle decompositions: we give a simple proof that a triangle-divisible graph of large minimum degree has a triangle decomposition and prove a similar result for quasirandom host graphs.
Our main result is that every graph G on n ≥ 10 4 r 3 vertices with minimum degree δ(G) ≥ (1−1/10 4 r 3/2 )n has a fractional Kr-decomposition. Combining this result with recent work of Barber, Kühn, Lo and Osthus leads to the best known minimum degree thresholds for exact (non-fractional) F -decompositions for a wide class of graphs F (including large cliques). For general k-uniform hypergraphs, we give a short argument which shows that there exists a constant c k > 0 such that every k-uniform hypergraph G on n vertices with minimum codegree at least (1 − c k /r 2k−1 )n has a fractional Kis the complete k-uniform hypergraph on r vertices. (Related fractional decomposition results for triangles have been obtained by Dross and for hypergraph cliques by Dukes as well as Yuster.) All the above new results involve purely combinatorial arguments. In particular, this yields a combinatorial proof of Wilson's theorem that every large F -divisible complete graph has an F -decomposition.
Abstract. Our main result essentially reduces the problem of finding an edge-decomposition of a balanced r-partite graph of large minimum degree into r-cliques to the problem of finding a fractional r-clique decomposition or an approximate one. Together with very recent results of Bowditch and Dukes as well as Montgomery on fractional decompositions into triangles and cliques respectively, this gives the best known bounds on the minimum degree which ensures an edge-decomposition of an r-partite graph into r-cliques (subject to trivially necessary divisibility conditions). The case of triangles translates into the setting of partially completed Latin squares and more generally the case of r-cliques translates into the setting of partially completed mutually orthogonal Latin squares.
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