Spanning subhypergraphs with degree constraints

Abstract

An old result of Tutte states that any $d$-regular graph contains a spanning subgraph in which every vertex has degree $k$ or $k+1$, for every $1\leq k\leq d$. We generalize this statement to hypergraphs, showing, for example, that every $3$-uniform $d$-regular hypergraph contains a subgraph in which all degrees are $k, k+1$ or $k+2$, for every $1\leq k\leq d$. This statement is best possible in the sense that the corresponding statement with only two allowed consecutive values is not true. We provide generalizations of this statement to higher uniformities and discuss several open problems.