A note on heavy cycles in weighted digraphs

Abstract

A weighted digraph is a digraph such that every arc is assigned a nonnegative number, called the weight of the arc. The weighted outdegree of a vertex $v$ in a weighted digraph $D$ is the sum of the weights of the arcs with $v$ as their tail, and the weight of a directed cycle $C$ in $D$ is the sum of the weights of the arcs of $C$. In this note we prove that if every vertex of a weighted digraph $D$ with order $n$ has weighted outdegree at least 1, then there exists a directed cycle in $D$ with weight at least $1/\log_2 n$. This proves a conjecture of Bollob\'{a}s and Scott up to a constant factor.