New bounds for linear arboricity and related problems

Abstract: A linear forest is a collection of vertex-disjoint paths. The Linear Arboricity Conjecture states that every graph of maximum degree $\Delta$ can be decomposed into at most $\lceil(\Delta+1)/2\rceil$ linear forests. We prove that $\Delta/2 + \mathcal{O}(\log n)$ linear forests suffice, where $n$ is the number of vertices of the graph. If $\Delta = \Omega(n^\varepsilon)$, this is an exponential improvement over the previous best error term. We achieve this by generalising P\'osa rotations from rotations of one endpoint of a path to simultaneous rotations of multiple endpoints of a linear forest. This method has further applications, including the resolution of a conjecture of Feige and Fuchs on spanning linear forests with few paths and the existence of optimally short tours in connected regular graphs.