A note on perfect matchings in uniform hypergraphs

We determine the \emph{exact} minimum $\ell$-degree threshold for perfect matchings in $k$-uniform hypergraphs when the corresponding threshold for perfect fractional matchings is significantly less than $\frac{1}{2} \binom{n}{k- \ell}$. This extends our previous results that determine the minimum $\ell$-degree thresholds for perfect matchings in $k$-uniform hypergraphs for all $\ell\ge k/2$ and provides two new (exact) thresholds: $(k,\ell)=(5,2)$ and $(7,3)$.Comment: 11 pages, final versio

Matchings in 3-uniform hypergraphs

We determine the minimum vertex degree that ensures a perfect matching in a 3-uniform hypergraph. More precisely, suppose that H is a sufficiently large 3-uniform hypergraph whose order n is divisible by 3. If the minimum vertex degree of H is greater than \binom{n-1}{2}-\binom{2n/3}{2}, then H contains a perfect matching. This bound is tight and answers a question of Han, Person and Schacht. More generally, we show that H contains a matching of size d\le n/3 if its minimum vertex degree is greater than \binom{n-1}{2}-\binom{n-d}{2}, which is also best possible. This extends a result of Bollobas, Daykin and Erdos.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure. To appear in JCT

Large matchings in uniform hypergraphs and the conjectures of Erdos and Samuels

In this paper we study conditions which guarantee the existence of perfect matchings and perfect fractional matchings in uniform hypergraphs. We reduce this problem to an old conjecture by Erd\H{o}s on estimating the maximum number of edges in a hypergraph when the (fractional) matching number is given, which we are able to solve in some special cases using probabilistic techniques. Based on these results, we obtain some general theorems on the minimum $d$-degree ensuring the existence of perfect (fractional) matchings. In particular, we asymptotically determine the minimum vertex degree which guarantees a perfect matching in 4-uniform and 5-uniform hypergraphs. We also discuss an application to a problem of finding an optimal data allocation in a distributed storage system