The hamiltonicity of essentially 9-connected line graphs

Yang et al. proved that every 3-connected, essentially 11-connected line graph is Hamilton-connected. This was extended by Li and Yang to 3-connected, essentially 10-connected graphs. Strengthening their result further, we prove that 3-connected, essentially 9-connected line graphs are Hamilton-connected. We use a method based on quasigraphs in combination with the discharging technique. The result extends to claw-free graphs.