Rainbow perfect matchings in r-partite graph structures

A matching M in an edge–colored (hyper)graph is rainbow if each pair of edges in M have distinct colors. We extend the result of Erdos and Spencer on the existence of rainbow perfect matchings in the complete bipartite graph Kn,n to complete bipartite multigraphs, dense regular bipartite graphs and complete r-partite r-uniform hypergraphs. The proof of the results use the Lopsided version of the Local Lovász Lemma.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Hitting all maximum cliques with a stable set using lopsided independent transversals

Rabern recently proved that any graph with omega >= (3/4)(Delta+1) contains a stable set meeting all maximum cliques. We strengthen this result, proving that such a stable set exists for any graph with omega > (2/3)(Delta+1). This is tight, i.e. the inequality in the statement must be strict. The proof relies on finding an independent transversal in a graph partitioned into vertex sets of unequal size.Comment: 7 pages. v4: Correction to statement of Lemma 8 and clarified proof

COMs: Complexes of Oriented Matroids

In his seminal 1983 paper, Jim Lawrence introduced lopsided sets and featured them as asymmetric counterparts of oriented matroids, both sharing the key property of strong elimination. Moreover, symmetry of faces holds in both structures as well as in the so-called affine oriented matroids. These two fundamental properties (formulated for covectors) together lead to the natural notion of "conditional oriented matroid" (abbreviated COM). These novel structures can be characterized in terms of three cocircuits axioms, generalizing the familiar characterization for oriented matroids. We describe a binary composition scheme by which every COM can successively be erected as a certain complex of oriented matroids, in essentially the same way as a lopsided set can be glued together from its maximal hypercube faces. A realizable COM is represented by a hyperplane arrangement restricted to an open convex set. Among these are the examples formed by linear extensions of ordered sets, generalizing the oriented matroids corresponding to the permutohedra. Relaxing realizability to local realizability, we capture a wider class of combinatorial objects: we show that non-positively curved Coxeter zonotopal complexes give rise to locally realizable COMs.Comment: 40 pages, 6 figures, (improved exposition

The Lefthanded Local Lemma characterizes chordal dependency graphs

Shearer gave a general theorem characterizing the family \LLL of dependency graphs labeled with probabilities $p_v$ which have the property that for any family of events with a dependency graph from \LLL (whose vertex-labels are upper bounds on the probabilities of the events), there is a positive probability that none of the events from the family occur. We show that, unlike the standard Lov\'asz Local Lemma---which is less powerful than Shearer's condition on every nonempty graph---a recently proved `Lefthanded' version of the Local Lemma is equivalent to Shearer's condition for all chordal graphs. This also leads to a simple and efficient algorithm to check whether a given labeled chordal graph is in \LLL.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur