Covering 2-connected 3-regular graphs with disjoint paths

Abstract

A path cover of a graph is a set of disjoint paths so that every vertex in the graph is contained in one of the paths. The path cover number $p(G)$ of graph $G$ is the cardinality of a path cover with the minimum number of paths. Reed in 1996 conjectured that a $2$-connected $3$-regular graph has path cover number at most $\lceil n/10\rceil$. In this paper, we confirm this conjecture.