Short rainbow cycles for families of matchings and triangles

Abstract

A generalization of the famous Caccetta--H\"aggkvist conjecture, suggested by Aharoni [Rainbow triangles and the Caccetta-H\"aggkvist conjecture, J. Graph Theory (2019)], is that any family $\mathcal{F}=(F_1, \ldots,F_n)$ of sets of edges in $K_n$, each of size $k$, has a rainbow cycle of length at most $\lceil \frac{n}{k}\rceil$. In [Rainbow cycles for families of matchings, Israel J. Math. (2023)] and [Non-uniform degrees and rainbow versions of the Caccetta-H\"aggkvist conjecture, SIAM J. Discrete Math. (2023)] it was shown that asymptotically this can be improved to $O(\log n)$ if all sets are matchings of size 2, or all are triangles. We show that the same is true in the mixed case, i.e., if each $F_i$ is either a matching of size 2 or a triangle. We also study the case that each $F_i$ is a matching of size 2 or a single edge, or each $F_i$ is a triangle or a single edge, and in each of these cases we determine the threshold proportion between the types, beyond which the rainbow girth goes from linear to logarithmic.