Minimal induced subgraphs of the class of 2-connected non-Hamiltonian wheel-free graphs

Abstract

Given a graph G and a graph property P we say that G is minimal with respect to P if no proper induced subgraph of G has the property P. An HC-obstruction is a minimal 2-connected non-Hamiltonian graph. Given a graph H, a graph G is H-free if G has no induced subgraph isomorphic to H. The main motivation for this paper originates from a theorem of Duffus, Gould, and Jacobson (1981), which characterizes all the minimal connected graphs with no Hamiltonian path. In 1998, Brousek characterized all the claw-free HC-obstructions. On a similar note, Chiba and Furuya (2021), characterized all (not only the minimal) 2-connected non-Hamiltonian {K1,3,N3,1,1}-free graphs. Recently, Cheriyan, Hajebi, and two of us (2022), characterized all triangle-free HC-obstructions and all the HC-obstructions which are split graphs. A wheel is a graph obtained from a cycle by adding a new vertex with at least three neighbors in the cycle. In this paper we characterize all the HC-obstructions which are wheel-free graphs.