On Fan Raspaud Conjecture

Abstract

A conjecture of Fan and Raspaud [3] asserts that every bridgeless cubic graph con-tains three perfect matchings with empty intersection. Kaiser and Raspaud [6] sug-gested a possible approach to this problem based on the concept of a balanced join in an embedded graph. We give here some new results concerning this conjecture and prove that a minimum counterexample must have at least 32 vertices.