The number of Hamiltonian decompositions of regular graphs

A Hamilton cycle in a graph Γ is a cycle passing through every vertex of Γ. A Hamiltonian decomposition of Γ is a partition of its edge set into disjoint Hamilton cycles. One of the oldest results in graph theory is Walecki’s theorem from the 19th century, showing that a complete graph Kn on an odd number of vertices n has a Hamiltonian decomposition. This result was recently greatly extended by Kühn and Osthus. They proved that every r-regular n-vertex graph Γ with even degree r = cn for some fixed c > 1/2 has a Hamiltonian decomposition, provided n = n(c) is sufficiently large. In this paper we address the natural question of estimating H(Γ), the number of such decompositions of Γ. Our main result is that H(Γ) = r(1+o(1))nr/2. In particular, the number of Hamiltonian decompositions of Kn is n(1+o(1))n2/2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${n^{\left( {1 + o\left( 1 \right)} \right){n^2}/2}}$$\end{document}.