3,081 research outputs found
A superlinear bound on the number of perfect matchings in cubic bridgeless graphs
Lovasz and Plummer conjectured in the 1970's that cubic bridgeless graphs
have exponentially many perfect matchings. This conjecture has been verified
for bipartite graphs by Voorhoeve in 1979, and for planar graphs by Chudnovsky
and Seymour in 2008, but in general only linear bounds are known. In this
paper, we provide the first superlinear bound in the general case.Comment: 54 pages v2: a short (missing) proof of Lemma 10 was adde
Computing Unique Maximum Matchings in O(m) time for Konig-Egervary Graphs and Unicyclic Graphs
Let alpha(G) denote the maximum size of an independent set of vertices and
mu(G) be the cardinality of a maximum matching in a graph G. A matching
saturating all the vertices is perfect. If alpha(G) + mu(G) equals the number
of vertices of G, then it is called a Konig-Egervary graph. A graph is
unicyclic if it has a unique cycle.
In 2010, Bartha conjectured that a unique perfect matching, if it exists, can
be found in O(m) time, where m is the number of edges.
In this paper we validate this conjecture for Konig-Egervary graphs and
unicylic graphs. We propose a variation of Karp-Sipser leaf-removal algorithm
(Karp and Spiser, 1981), which ends with an empty graph if and only if the
original graph is a Konig-Egervary graph with a unique perfect matching
obtained as an output as well.
We also show that a unicyclic non-bipartite graph G may have at most one
perfect matching, and this is the case where G is a Konig-Egervary graph.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Local Maximum Stable Sets Greedoids Stemmed from Very Well-Covered Graphs
A maximum stable set in a graph G is a stable set of maximum cardinality. S
is called a local maximum stable set of G if S is a maximum stable set of the
subgraph induced by the closed neighborhood of S. A greedoid (V,F) is called a
local maximum stable set greedoid if there exists a graph G=(V,E) such that its
family of local maximum stable sets coinsides with (V,F). It has been shown
that the family local maximum stable sets of a forest T forms a greedoid on its
vertex set. In this paper we demonstrate that if G is a very well-covered
graph, then its family of local maximum stable sets is a greedoid if and only
if G has a unique perfect matching.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figure
How many matchings cover the nodes of a graph?
Given an undirected graph, are there matchings whose union covers all of
its nodes, that is, a matching--cover? A first, easy polynomial solution
from matroid union is possible, as already observed by Wang, Song and Yuan
(Mathematical Programming, 2014). However, it was not satisfactory neither from
the algorithmic viewpoint nor for proving graphic theorems, since the
corresponding matroid ignores the edges of the graph.
We prove here, simply and algorithmically: all nodes of a graph can be
covered with matchings if and only if for every stable set we have
. When , an exception occurs: this condition is not
enough to guarantee the existence of a matching--cover, that is, the
existence of a perfect matching, in this case Tutte's famous matching theorem
(J. London Math. Soc., 1947) provides the right `good' characterization. The
condition above then guarantees only that a perfect -matching exists, as
known from another theorem of Tutte (Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., 1953).
Some results are then deduced as consequences with surprisingly simple
proofs, using only the level of difficulty of bipartite matchings. We give some
generalizations, as well as a solution for minimization if the edge-weights are
non-negative, while the edge-cardinality maximization of matching--covers
turns out to be already NP-hard.
We have arrived at this problem as the line graph special case of a model
arising for manufacturing integrated circuits with the technology called
`Directed Self Assembly'.Comment: 10 page
On cubic bridgeless graphs whose edge-set cannot be covered by four perfect matchings
The problem of establishing the number of perfect matchings necessary to
cover the edge-set of a cubic bridgeless graph is strictly related to a famous
conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson. In this paper we prove that deciding whether
this number is at most 4 for a given cubic bridgeless graph is NP-complete. We
also construct an infinite family of snarks (cyclically
4-edge-connected cubic graphs of girth at least five and chromatic index four)
whose edge-set cannot be covered by 4 perfect matchings. Only two such graphs
were known. It turns out that the family also has interesting
properties with respect to the shortest cycle cover problem. The shortest cycle
cover of any cubic bridgeless graph with edges has length at least
, and we show that this inequality is strict for graphs of .
We also construct the first known snark with no cycle cover of length less than
.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure
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