Maximum Skew-Symmetric Flows and Matchings

The maximum integer skew-symmetric flow problem (MSFP) generalizes both the maximum flow and maximum matching problems. It was introduced by Tutte in terms of self-conjugate flows in antisymmetrical digraphs. He showed that for these objects there are natural analogs of classical theoretical results on usual network flows, such as the flow decomposition, augmenting path, and max-flow min-cut theorems. We give unified and shorter proofs for those theoretical results. We then extend to MSFP the shortest augmenting path method of Edmonds and Karp and the blocking flow method of Dinits, obtaining algorithms with similar time bounds in general case. Moreover, in the cases of unit arc capacities and unit ``node capacities'' the blocking skew-symmetric flow algorithm has time bounds similar to those established in Even and Tarjan (1975) and Karzanov (1973) for Dinits' algorithm. In particular, this implies an algorithm for finding a maximum matching in a nonbipartite graph in $O(\sqrt{n}m)$ time, which matches the time bound for the algorithm of Micali and Vazirani. Finally, extending a clique compression technique of Feder and Motwani to particular skew-symmetric graphs, we speed up the implied maximum matching algorithm to run in $O(\sqrt{n}m\log(n^2/m)/\log{n})$ time, improving the best known bound for dense nonbipartite graphs. Also other theoretical and algorithmic results on skew-symmetric flows and their applications are presented.Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Mathematical Programming, minor stylistic corrections and shortenings to the original versio

The purity of set-systems related to Grassmann necklaces

Studying the problem of quasicommuting quantum minors, Leclerc and Zelevinsky introduced in 1998 the notion of weakly separated sets in $[n]:=\{1,\ldots, n\}$. Moreover, they raised several conjectures on the purity for this symmetric relation, in particular, on the Boolean cube $2^{[n]}$. In 0909.1423[math.CO] we proved these purity conjectures for the Boolean cube $2^{[n]}$, the discrete Grassmanian ${[n]\choose r}$, and some other set-systems. Oh, Postnikov, and Speyer in arxiv:1109.4434 proved the purity for weakly separated collections inside a positroid which contain a Grassmann necklace $\mathcal N$ defining the positroid. We denote such set-systems as $\mathcal{I}nt(\mathcal N )$. In this paper we give an alternative (and shorter) proof of the purity of $\mathcal{I}nt(\mathcal N )$ and present a stronger result. More precisely, we introduce a set-system $\mathcal{O}ut(\mathcal N )$ complementary to $\mathcal{I}nt(\mathcal N )$, in a sense, and establish its purity. Moreover, we prove (Theorem~3) that these two set-systems are weakly separated from each other. As a consequence of Theorem~3, we obtain the purity of set-systems related to pairs of weakly separated necklaces (Proposition 4 and Corollaries 1 and 2). Finally, we raise a conjecture on the purity of both the interior and exterior of a generalized necklace.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure