We consider sufficient conditions for the existence of kth powers of Hamiltonian cycles in n-vertex graphs G with minimum degree n for arbitrarily small > 0. About 20 years ago Komlós, Sarközy, and Szemerédi resolved the conjectures of Pósa and Seymour and obtained optimal minimum degree conditions for this problem by showing that = k k+1 suffices for large n. For smaller values of the given graph G must satisfy additional assumptions. We show that inducing subgraphs of density > 0 on linear subsets of vertices and being inseparable, in the sense that every cut has density at least > 0, are sufficient assumptions for this problem and, in fact, for a variant of the bandwidth theorem. This generalizes recent results of Staden and Treglown. KEYWORDS absorption method, bandwidth theorem, powers of Hamiltonian cycles 1 INTRODUCTION We study sufficient conditions for the existence of spanning subgraphs in large finite graphs and begin the discussion with powers of Hamiltonian cycles. For k ∈ N the kth power of a given graph H is the graph H k on the same vertex set with xy being an edge in H k if x and y are distinct vertices of H that are connected in H by a path of at most k edges. For simplicity, we refer to a kth power of a path with at least k vertices as a k-path. Moreover, we refer to the ordered k-tuples of the first and last k vertices This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.