A Diameter-Revealing Proof of the Bondy-Lovász Lemma

Abstract: We present a strengthened version of a lemma due to Bondy and Lov\'asz. This lemma establishes the connectivity of a certain graph whose nodes correspond to the spanning trees of a 2-vertex-connected graph, and implies the k=2 case of the Gy\H{o}ri-Lov\'asz Theorem on partitioning of k-vertex-connected graphs. Our strengthened version constructively proves an asymptotically tight O(|V|^2) bound on the worst-case diameter of this graph of spanning trees.