Proof of a tournament partition conjecture and an application to 1-factors with prescribed cycle lengths

In 1982 Thomassen asked whether there exists an integer f(k,t) such that every strongly f(k,t)-connected tournament T admits a partition of its vertex set into t vertex classes V ₁,…V _t such that for all i the subtournament T[V _i] induced on T by V _i is strongly k-connected. Our main result implies an affirmative answer to this question. In particular we show that f(k, t)=O(k ⁷ t ⁴) suffices. As another application of our main result we give an affirmative answer to a question of Song as to whether, for any integer t, there exists aninteger h(t) such that every strongly h(t)-connected tournament has a 1-factor consisting of t vertex-disjoint cycles of prescribed lengths. We show that h(t)=O(t ⁵) suffices.