Almost-perfect packings and Tuza's conjecture in the random geometric graph

Abstract

The triangle packing number $\hat{I}½(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the maximum size of a set of edge-disjoint triangles in $G$. Tuza conjectured that in any graph $G$ there exists a set of at most $2\hat{I}½(G)$ edges intersecting every triangle in $G$. We show that Tuza's conjecture holds in the random geometric graph for a large range of densities. We also study the problem of covering almost all edges of the random geometric graph with edge-disjoint copies of some fixed graph $F$. In particular, we show the existence of almost-perfect packings for an infinite family of $F$, and state some negative results as well.

26 pages