Closure and Forbidden Pairs for Hamiltonicity

Let C be the claw K 1;3 and N the net, i.e. the only connected graph with degree sequence 333111. It is known Bedrossian 1991; Faudree and Gould 1997] that if X; Y is a pair of connected graphs such that, for any 2-connected graph G, G being X Y-free implies G is hamiltonian, then X is the claw C and Y belongs to a nite list of graphs, one of them being the net N. For any such pair X; Y we show that the closures of all 2-connected X Y-free graphs form a subclass of the class of C N-free graphs, and we fully describe their structure.