Monochromatic cycle partitions in 3-mean edge-colourings

Abstract

Given $r \in \mathbb{N}$ and an edge-coloured complete graph such that the average number of colours incident with a vertex is at most $r$, Conlon and Stein asked whether there is a vertex partition into a bounded number of monochromatic cycles, and proved this for $r=2$. We settle the first open case by proving the corresponding statement for $r=3$.