Cyclic 7-edge-cuts in fullerene graphs

摘要

A fullerene graph is a planar cubic graph whose all faces are pentagonal and hexagonal. The structure of cyclic edge-cuts of fullerene graphs of sizes at most 6 is known. In the paper we study cyclic 7-edge connectivity of fullerene graphs, distinguishing between degenerate and non-degenerate cyclic edge-cuts, regarding the arrangement of the 12 pentagons. We prove that if there exists a non-degenerate cyclic 7-edge-cut in a fullerene graph, then the graph is a nanotube unless it is one of the two exceptions presented. We determined that there are 57 configurations of degenerate cyclic 7-edge-cuts, and we listed all of them. Keywords Fullerene - Fullerene graph - Cyclic edge-connectivity - Cyclic edge-cuts