In the fictional country of Mahishmati, there are $50$ cities, including a capital city. Some pairs of cities are connected by two-way flights. Given a city $A$, an ordered list of cities $C_1,\ldots, C_{50}$ is called an antitour from $A$ if every city (including $A$) appears in the list exactly once, and for each $k\in \{1,2,\ldots, 50\}$, it is impossible to go from $A$ to $C_k$ by a sequence of exactly $k$ (not necessarily distinct) flights. Baahubali notices that there is an antitour from $A$ for any city $A$. Further, he can take a sequence of flights, starting from the capital and passing through each city exactly once. Find the least possible total number of antitours from the capital city. Proposed by Sutanay Bhattacharya
Problem
Source: India TST 2023 Day 1 P1
Tags: combinatorics, graph theory
12.07.2023 16:46
Consider a graph with $50$ vertices, the cities representing the vertices, and edges representing the flights. Call a graph good if there are antitours from each city. Claim: A good graph cannot have any odd cycle. Proof: We assume the contrary. Let the odd cycle be $v_1v_2v_3 \dots v_{2k+1}$ Now consider the antitour from $v_1$. Let the antitour be $\{ C_1, C_2, C_3, \dots , C_{50} \}$. Now, as there are $2k+1$ vertices in the odd cycle, atleast one of them have index $\ge 2k+1$ in the antitour , i.e, $v_t=C_n$, ($n \ge 2k+1$), $v_t \in$ odd cycle. If $t,n$ are both odd, consider the path $\{ \underbrace{v_1v_{2k+1}v_{2k} \dots v_tv_{t-1}v_tv_{t-1} \dots}_{n \text{ terms}} \}$ If $t$ even, $n$ odd, $\{ \underbrace{v_1v_2v_3 \dots v_tv_{t+1}v_tv_{t+1} \dots}_{n \text{ terms}} \}$ If $t$ odd, $n$ even, $\{ \underbrace{v_1v_{2k+1}v_{2k} \dots v_tv_{t-1}v_tv_{t-1} \dots}_{n \text{ terms}} \}$ If $t, n$ are both even, $\{ \underbrace{v_1v_{2k+1}v_{2k} \dots v_tv_{t-1}v_tv_{t-1} \dots}_{n \text{ terms}} \}$ Above 4 paths contradicts that $v_t=C_n$, and we are done. Now let the capital city be $v_1$. As given, there is a path from $v_1$ to $v_{50}$ (WLOG) in the graph. As there are no odd cycles, there is no edge $\{v_iv_j\}$ if $i$ and $j$ have same parity. Claim: The minimum number of antitours from the capital city is $(25!)^2$ Proof: As there is no edge $\{v_iv_j\}$ for same parity $i, j$, each edge takes us from an odd index to an even index vertex. Now assign a random odd number to all $v_i$ if $i$ is odd, and even number to $v_i$ if $i$ is even and form the collection, $\{C_1, C_2, \dots, C_{50} \}$ This is clearly an antitour from $v_1$ as an odd number of edges taken from $v_1$ take us to an even numbered vertex, and vice versa. The number of ways to assign odd numbers is $25!$, and number of ways to assign even numbers is $25!$. Hence, there are atleast $(25!)^2$ possible antitours from $v_1$. For the construction, join $v_1$ to all vertices $v_i$ if $i$ is even. and form the $v_1v_2 \dots v_{50}$ cycle. Clearly, this works.
04.12.2023 14:37
are there official sols??