David Eppstein ; Daniel Frishberg ; William Maxwell - On the expansion of Hanoi graphs

dmtcs:16770 - Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, July 4, 2026, vol. 28:2 - https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.16770
On the expansion of Hanoi graphsArticle

Authors: David Eppstein ; Daniel Frishberg ; William Maxwell

The famous Tower of Hanoi puzzle involves moving $n$ discs of distinct sizes from one of $p\geq 3$ pegs (traditionally $p=3$) to another of the pegs, subject to the constraints that only one disc may be moved at a time, and no disc can ever be placed on a disc smaller than itself. Much is known about the Hanoi graph $H_p^n$, whose $p^n$ vertices represent the configurations of the puzzle, and whose edges represent the pairs of configurations separated by a single legal move. In a previous paper, the present authors presented nearly tight asymptotic bounds of $O((p-2)^n)$ and $Ω(n^{(1-p)/2}(p-2)^n)$ on the treewidth of this graph for fixed $p \geq 3$. In this paper we show that the upper bound is tight, by giving a matching lower bound of $Ω((p-2)^n)$ for the expansion of $H_p^n$.

18 pages, 5 figures


Volume: vol. 28:2
Section: Graph Theory
Published on: July 4, 2026
Accepted on: May 2, 2026
Submitted on: October 23, 2025
Keywords: Combinatorics, Discrete Mathematics

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