Reconfiguration of Hamiltonian Cycles in Rectangular Grid Graphs

Abstract

We study reconfiguration of simple Hamiltonian cycles in a rectangular grid graph [Formula: see text], where the Hamiltonian cycle in each step of the reconfiguration connects every internal vertex of [Formula: see text] to a boundary vertex by a single straight line segment. We introduce two operations, flip and transpose, which are local to the grid. We show that any simple cycle of [Formula: see text] can be reconfigured to any other simple cycle of [Formula: see text] using [Formula: see text] flip and transpose operations. Our result proves that the simple Hamiltonian cycle graph [Formula: see text] is connected with respect to those two operations and has diameter [Formula: see text].