2,399 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
Some snarks are worse than others
Many conjectures and open problems in graph theory can either be reduced to
cubic graphs or are directly stated for cubic graphs. Furthermore, it is known
that for a lot of problems, a counterexample must be a snark, i.e. a bridgeless
cubic graph which is not 3--edge-colourable. In this paper we deal with the
fact that the family of potential counterexamples to many interesting
conjectures can be narrowed even further to the family of
bridgeless cubic graphs whose edge set cannot be covered with four perfect
matchings. The Cycle Double Cover Conjecture, the Shortest Cycle Cover
Conjecture and the Fan-Raspaud Conjecture are examples of statements for which
is crucial. In this paper, we study parameters which have
the potential to further refine and thus enlarge the set of
cubic graphs for which the mentioned conjectures can be verified. We show that
can be naturally decomposed into subsets with increasing
complexity, thereby producing a natural scale for proving these conjectures.
More precisely, we consider the following parameters and questions: given a
bridgeless cubic graph, (i) how many perfect matchings need to be added, (ii)
how many copies of the same perfect matching need to be added, and (iii) how
many 2--factors need to be added so that the resulting regular graph is Class
I? We present new results for these parameters and we also establish some
strong relations between these problems and some long-standing conjectures.Comment: 27 pages, 16 figure
On the expected number of perfect matchings in cubic planar graphs
A well-known conjecture by Lov\'asz and Plummer from the 1970s asserted that
a bridgeless cubic graph has exponentially many perfect matchings. It was
solved in the affirmative by Esperet et al. (Adv. Math. 2011). On the other
hand, Chudnovsky and Seymour (Combinatorica 2012) proved the conjecture in the
special case of cubic planar graphs. In our work we consider random bridgeless
cubic planar graphs with the uniform distribution on graphs with vertices.
Under this model we show that the expected number of perfect matchings in
labeled bridgeless cubic planar graphs is asymptotically , where
and is an explicit algebraic number. We also
compute the expected number of perfect matchings in (non necessarily
bridgeless) cubic planar graphs and provide lower bounds for unlabeled graphs.
Our starting point is a correspondence between counting perfect matchings in
rooted cubic planar maps and the partition function of the Ising model in
rooted triangulations.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure
Tight upper bound on the maximum anti-forcing numbers of graphs
Let be a simple graph with a perfect matching. Deng and Zhang showed that
the maximum anti-forcing number of is no more than the cyclomatic number.
In this paper, we get a novel upper bound on the maximum anti-forcing number of
and investigate the extremal graphs. If has a perfect matching
whose anti-forcing number attains this upper bound, then we say is an
extremal graph and is a nice perfect matching. We obtain an equivalent
condition for the nice perfect matchings of and establish a one-to-one
correspondence between the nice perfect matchings and the edge-involutions of
, which are the automorphisms of order two such that and
are adjacent for every vertex . We demonstrate that all extremal
graphs can be constructed from by implementing two expansion operations,
and is extremal if and only if one factor in a Cartesian decomposition of
is extremal. As examples, we have that all perfect matchings of the
complete graph and the complete bipartite graph are nice.
Also we show that the hypercube , the folded hypercube ()
and the enhanced hypercube () have exactly ,
and nice perfect matchings respectively.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure
NC Algorithms for Computing a Perfect Matching and a Maximum Flow in One-Crossing-Minor-Free Graphs
In 1988, Vazirani gave an NC algorithm for computing the number of perfect
matchings in -minor-free graphs by building on Kasteleyn's scheme for
planar graphs, and stated that this "opens up the possibility of obtaining an
NC algorithm for finding a perfect matching in -free graphs." In this
paper, we finally settle this 30-year-old open problem. Building on recent NC
algorithms for planar and bounded-genus perfect matching by Anari and Vazirani
and later by Sankowski, we obtain NC algorithms for perfect matching in any
minor-closed graph family that forbids a one-crossing graph. This family
includes several well-studied graph families including the -minor-free
graphs and -minor-free graphs. Graphs in these families not only have
unbounded genus, but can have genus as high as . Our method applies as
well to several other problems related to perfect matching. In particular, we
obtain NC algorithms for the following problems in any family of graphs (or
networks) with a one-crossing forbidden minor:
Determining whether a given graph has a perfect matching and if so,
finding one.
Finding a minimum weight perfect matching in the graph, assuming
that the edge weights are polynomially bounded.
Finding a maximum -flow in the network, with arbitrary
capacities.
The main new idea enabling our results is the definition and use of
matching-mimicking networks, small replacement networks that behave the same,
with respect to matching problems involving a fixed set of terminals, as the
larger network they replace.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
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