Approximate path decompositions of regular graphs

Abstract

We show that the edges of any $d$-regular graph can be almost decomposed into paths of length roughly $d$, giving an approximate solution to a problem of Kotzig from 1957. Along the way, we show that almost all of the vertices of a $d$-regular graph can be partitioned into $n/(d+1)$ paths, asymptotically confirming a conjecture of Magnant and Martin from 2009.