ABSTRACT The shortest cycle cover conjecture (SCC conjecture), proposed by Alon and Tarsi, asserts that every bridgeless cubic graph has a cycle cover with a total length at most . Tarsi further proposed a related conjecture, the conjecture, which states that every bridgeless cubic graph has a 3‐cycle cover with a total length at most . In this paper, we prove that every cyclically odd‐‐edge‐connected cubic graph has a 3‐cycle cover with a total length at most . Consequently, the SCC conjecture and the conjecture are verified in this paper for cubic graphs with cyclic odd‐edge‐connectivity at least 29 and 17, respectively. Additionally, for cubic graphs that satisfies Kaiser–Raspaud conjecture (i.e., every bridgeless cubic graph has two perfect matchings and and a parity subgraph , such that ), the SCC conjecture and the conjecture are verified for graphs with girth at least 20 and 10, respectively.
Luo et al. (2026) studied this question.