On a conjecture of Quintas and arc-traceability in upset tournaments

Abstract

A digraph D = (V, A) is arc-traceable if for each arc xy in A, xy lies on a directed path containing all the vertices of V , i.e., hamiltonian path. We prove a conjecture of Quintas [7]: if D is arc-traceable, then the condensation of D is a directed path. We show that the converse of this conjecture is false by providing an example of an upset tournament which is not arc-traceable. We then give a characterization for upset tournaments in terms of their score sequences, characterize which arcs of an upset tournament lie on a hamiltonian path, and deduce a characterization of arc-traceable upset tournaments.