On-Hei Solomon Lo, Minors of non-hamiltonian graphs

A seminal result of Tutte asserts that every 4-connected planar graph is hamiltonian. By Wagner’s theorem, Tutte’s result can be restated as: every 4-connected graph with no $K_{3,3}$ minor is hamiltonian. In 2018, Ding and Marshall posed the problem of characterizing the minor-minimal 3-connected non-hamiltonian graphs. They conjectured that every 3-connected non-hamiltonian graph contains a minor of $K_{3,4}$, $\mathfrak{Q}^+$, or the Herschel graph, where $\mathfrak{Q}^+$ is obtained from the cube by adding a new vertex and connecting it to three vertices that share a common neighbor in the cube. We recently resolved this conjecture along with some related problems. In this talk, we review the background and discuss the proof.