In this paper we investigate the structure of flip graphs on non-crossing perfect matchings in the plane. Specifically, consider all non-crossing straight-line perfect matchings on a set of $2n$ points that are placed equidistantly on the unit circle. A flip operation on such a matching replaces two matching edges that span an empty quadrilateral with the other two edges of the quadrilateral, and the flip is called centered if the quadrilateral contains the center of the unit circle. The graph $\mathcal{G}_n$ has those matchings as vertices, and an edge between any two matchings that differ in a flip, and it is known to have many interesting properties. In this paper we focus on the spanning subgraph $\mathcal{H}_n$ of $\mathcal{G}_n$ obtained by taking all edges that correspond to centered flips, omitting edges that correspond to non-centered flips. We show that the graph $\mathcal{H}_n$ is connected for odd $n$, but has exponentially many small connected components for even $n$, which we characterize and count via Catalan and generalized Narayana numbers. For odd $n$, we also prove that the diameter of $\mathcal{H}_n$ is linear in $n$. Furthermore, we determine the minimum and maximum degree of $\mathcal{H}_n$ for all $n$, and characterize and count the corresponding vertices. Our results imply the non-existence of certain rainbow cycles in $\mathcal{G}_n$, and they resolve several open questions and conjectures raised in a recent paper by Felsner, Kleist, Mütze, and Sering.
A perfect straight-line matching $M$ on a finite set $P$ of points in the plane is a set of segments such that each point in $P$ is an endpoint of exactly one segment. $M$ is non-crossing if no two segments in $M$ cross each other. Given a perfect straight-line matching $M$ with at least one crossing, we can remove this crossing by a flip operation. The flip operation removes two crossing segments on a point set $Q$ and adds two non-crossing segments to attain a new perfect matching $M'$. It is well known that after a finite number of flips, a non-crossing matching is attained and no further f…
In this paper, we study the flip graph on the perfect matchings of a complete graph of even order. We investigate its combinatorial and spectral properties including connections to the signed reversal graph and we improve a previous upper bound on its chromatic number.
Hamilton paths and cycles in flip graphs of (almost-)perfect matchings
Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Leipzig（莱比锡大学数学与信息学院）；Fakultät Informatik, TU Dresden（德累斯顿工业大学计算机学院）；Fachbereich Informatik, Universität Hamburg（汉堡大学信息系）；Institut für Mathematik, TU Berlin（柏林工业大学数学研究所）；Institut für Mathematik, Universität Kassel（卡塞尔大学数学研究所）；Zentrum für Industriemathematik, Universität Bremen（不来梅大学工业数学中心）
Plane perfect matchings of $2n$ points in convex position are in bijection with triangulations of convex polygons of size $n+2$. Edge flips are a classic operation to perform local changes both structures have in common. In this work, we use the explicit bijection from Aichholzer et al. (2018) to determine the effect of an edge flip on the one side of the bijection to the other side, that is, we show how the two different types of edge flips are related. Moreover, we give an algebraic interpretation of the flip graph of triangulations in terms of elements of the corresponding Temperley-Lieb al…
We provide a new type of proof for the Koebe-Andreev-Thurston (KAT) planar circle packing theorem based on combinatorial edge-flips. In particular, we show that starting from a disk packing with a maximal planar contact graph $G$, one can remove any flippable edge $e^-$ of this graph and then continuously flow the disks in the plane, such that at the end of the flow, one obtains a new disk packing whose contact graph is the graph resulting from flipping the edge $e^-$ in $G$. This flow is parameterized by a single inversive distance.
It is well-known that every maximal planar graph has a matching of size at least $\tfrac{n+8}{3}$ if $n\geq 14$. In this paper, we investigate similar matching-bounds for maximal \emph{1-planar} graphs, i.e., graphs that can be drawn such that every edge has at most one crossing. In particular we show that every 3-connected simple-maximal 1-planar graph has a matching of size at least $\tfrac{2n+6}{5}$; the bound decreases to $\tfrac{3n+14}{10}$ if the graph need not be 3-connected. We also give (weaker) bounds when the graph comes with a fixed 1-planar drawing or is not simple. All our bounds…
In 1979, Nishizeki and Baybars showed that every planar graph with minimum degree 3 has a matching of size $\frac{n}{3}+c$ (where the constant $c$ depends on the connectivity), and even better bounds hold for planar graphs with minimum degree 4 and 5. In this paper, we investigate similar matching-bounds for {\em 1-planar} graphs, i.e., graphs that can be drawn such that every edge has at most one crossing. We show that every 1-planar graph with minimum degree 3 has a matching of size at least $\frac{1}{7}n+\frac{12}{7}$, and this is tight for some graphs. We provide similar bounds for 1-plana…
Matching minors are a specialisation of minors fit for the study of graph with perfect matchings. The notion of matching minors has been used to give a structural description of bipartite graphs on which the number of perfect matchings can becomputed efficiently, based on a result of Little, by McCuaig et al. in 1999.In this paper we generalise basic ideas from the graph minor series by Robertson and Seymour to the setting of bipartite graphs with perfect matchings. We introducea version of Erdos-Posa property for matching minors and find a direct link between this property and planarity. From…
We show that the edges of any planar graph of maximum degree at most $9$ can be partitioned into $4$ linear forests and a matching. Combined with known results, this implies that the edges of any planar graph $G$ of odd maximum degree $Δ\ge 9$ can be partitioned into $\tfrac{Δ-1}{2}$ linear forests and one matching. This strengthens well-known results stating that graphs in this class have chromatic index $Δ$ [Vizing, 1965] and linear arboricity at most $\lceil(Δ+1)/2\rceil$ [Wu, 1999].
A well-known conjecture by Lovász 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 $n$ vertices. Under this model we show that the expected number of perfect matchings in labeled bridgeless cubic planar graphs is asymptotically $cγ^n$,…
The determinant method of Kasteleyn gives a method of computing the number of perfect matchings of a planar bipartite graph. In addition, results of Bernardi exhibit a bijection between spanning trees of a planar bipartite graph and elements of its Jacobian. In this paper, we explore an analogue of Bernardi's results, providing a canonical simply transitive group action of the Kasteleyn cokernel of a planar bipartite graph on its set of perfect matchings, when the planar bipartite graph in question is of the form $G^+$, as defined by Kenyon, Propp and Wilson.
It is well-known that every $n$-vertex planar graph with minimum degree 3 has a matching of size at least $\frac{n}{3}$. But all proofs of this use the Tutte-Berge-formula for the size of a maximum matching. Hence these proofs are not directly algorithmic, and to find such a matching one must apply a general-purposes maximum matching algorithm, which has run-time $O(n^{1.5}α(n))$ for planar graphs. In contrast to this, this paper gives a linear-time algorithm that finds a matching of size at least $\frac{n}{3}$ in any planar graph with minimum degree 3.
This paper proves that every planar graph $G$ contains a matching $M$ such that the Alon-Tarsi number of $G-M$ is at most $4$. As a consequence, $G-M$ is $4$-paintable, and hence $G$ itself is $1$-defective $4$-paintable. This improves a result of Cushing and Kierstead [Planar Graphs are 1-relaxed, 4-choosable, {\em European Journal of Combinatorics} 31(2010),1385-1397], who proved that every planar graph is $1$-defective $4$-choosable.
Here we prove that counting maximum matchings in planar, bipartite graphs is #P-complete. This is somewhat surprising in the light that the number of perfect matchings in planar graphs can be computed in polynomial time. We also prove that counting non-necessarily perfect matchings in planar graphs is already #P-complete if the problem is restricted to bipartite graphs. So far hardness was proved only for general, non-necessarily bipartite graphs.
A matching of a graph is a set of edges without common end vertex. A graph is called 1-planar if it admits a drawing in the plane such that each edge is crossed at most once. Recently, Biedl and Wittnebel proved that every 1-planar graph with minimum degree 3 and $n\geq 7$ vertices has a matching of size at least $\frac{n+12}{7}$, which is tight for some graphs. They also provided tight lower bounds for the sizes of matchings in 1-planar graphs with minimum degree 4 or 5. In this paper, we show that any 1-planar graph with minimum degree 6 and $n \geq 36$ vertices has a matching of size at lea…
Barnette's Conjecture claims that all cubic, 3-connected, planar, bipartite graphs are Hamiltonian. We give a translation of this conjecture into the matching-theoretic setting. This allows us to relax the requirement of planarity to give the equivalent conjecture that all cubic, 3-connected, Pfaffian, bipartite graphs are Hamiltonian. A graph, other than the path of length three, is a brace if it is bipartite and any two disjoint edges are part of a perfect matching. Our perspective allows us to observe that Barnette's Conjecture can be reduced to cubic, planar braces. We show a similar reduc…
Near-perfect matchings in highly connected 1-planar graphs with a local crossing constraint
College of Mathematics and Statistics, Hunan Normal University（湖南师范大学数学与统计学院）；College of Mathematics and Statistics, Hunan First Normal University（湖南第一师范学院数学与统计学院）
We consider a natural local dynamic on the set of all rooted planar maps with $n$ edges that is in some sense analogous to "edge flip" Markov chains, which have been considered before on a variety of combinatorial structures (triangulations of the $n$-gon and quadrangulations of the sphere, among others). We provide the first polynomial upper bound for the mixing time of this "edge rotation" chain on planar maps: we show that the spectral gap of the edge rotation chain is bounded below by an appropriate constant times $n^{-11/2}$. In doing so, we provide a partially new proof of the fact that …
We give upper bounds on weighted perfect matchings in pfaffian graphs. These upper bounds are better than Bregman's upper bounds on the number of perfect matchings. We show that some of our upper bounds are sharp for 3 and 4-regular pfaffian graphs. We apply our results to fullerene graphs.
In this paper, we study two problems related to planar matchings in random bipartite graphs. First, we colour each edge of the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ uniformly randomly from amongst ${r}$ colours and show that if ${r}$ grows linearly with ${n}$ then the maximum rainbow matching is a non-trivial fraction of ${r}$ with high probability, i.e. with probability converging to one as ${n \rightarrow \infty}$ Next we consider planar matchings in a dependent setting where each vertex is forced to choose exactly one neighbour from amongst all possible choices. We obtain estimates for the lar…
We introduce a new cohomology theory for planar trivalent graphs with perfect matchings. The graded Euler characteristic of the cohomology is a one variable polynomial called the 2-factor polynomial that, if nonzero when evaluated at one, implies that the perfect matching is even and therefore the graph is 4-face colorable. We also define several new polynomials invariants of graphs with and without perfect matchings that are invariants of abstract tensors systems and spin networks defined by Roger Penrose in the 1970s. We show how some of these polynomials can be ``categorified'' into their o…
We address the following question: When a randomly chosen regular bipartite multi--graph is drawn in the plane in the ``standard way'', what is the distribution of its maximum size planar matching (set of non--crossing disjoint edges) and maximum size planar subgraph (set of non--crossing edges which may share endpoints)? The problem is a generalization of the Longest Increasing Sequence (LIS) problem (also called Ulam's problem). We present combinatorial identities which relate the number of $r$-regular bipartite multi--graphs with maximum planar matching (maximum planar subgraph)of at most $…
Given a graph $G$, and a spanning subgraph $H$ of $G$, a circular $q$-backbone $k$-coloring of $(G,H)$ is a proper $k$-coloring $c$ of $G$ such that $q\le \lvert c(u)-c(v)\rvert \le k-q$, for every edge $uv\in E(H)$. The circular $q$-backbone chromatic number of $(G,H)$, denoted by $CBC_q(G,H)$, is the minimum integer $k$ for which there exists a circular $q$-backbone $k$-coloring of $(G,H)$. The Four Color Theorem implies that whenever $G$ is planar, we have $CBC_2(G,H)\le 8$. It is conjectured that this upper bound can be improved to 7 when $H$ is a tree, and to 6 when $H$ is a matching. In …
We present a deterministic way of assigning small (log bit) weights to the edges of a bipartite planar graph so that the minimum weight perfect matching becomes unique. The isolation lemma as described in (Mulmuley et al. 1987) achieves the same for general graphs using a randomized weighting scheme, whereas we can do it deterministically when restricted to bipartite planar graphs. As a consequence, we reduce both decision and construction versions of the matching problem to testing whether a matrix is singular, under the promise that its determinant is 0 or 1, thus obtaining a highly parallel…
We address the following question: When a randomly chosen regular bipartite multi--graph is drawn in the plane in the ``standard way'', what is the distribution of its maximum size planar matching (set of non--crossing disjoint edges) and maximum size planar subgraph (set of non--crossing edges which may share endpoints)? The problem is a generalization of the Longest Increasing Sequence (LIS) problem (also called Ulam's problem). We present combinatorial identities which relate the number of r-regular bipartite multi--graphs with maximum planar matching (maximum planar subgraph) of at most d …
The flip graph of triangulations has as vertices all triangulations of a convex $n$-gon, and an edge between any two triangulations that differ in exactly one edge. An $r$-rainbow cycle in this graph is a cycle in which every inner edge of the triangulation appears exactly $r$ times. This notion of a rainbow cycle extends in a natural way to other flip graphs. In this paper we investigate the existence of $r$-rainbow cycles for three different flip graphs on classes of geometric objects: the aforementioned flip graph of triangulations of a convex $n$-gon, the flip graph of plane trees on an ar…
Is perfect matching in NC? That is, is there a deterministic fast parallel algorithm for it? This has been an outstanding open question in theoretical computer science for over three decades, ever since the discovery of RNC matching algorithms. Within this question, the case of planar graphs has remained an enigma: On the one hand, counting the number of perfect matchings is far harder than finding one (the former is #P-complete and the latter is in P), and on the other, for planar graphs, counting has long been known to be in NC whereas finding one has resisted a solution. In this paper, we g…
Given a positive integer $n$ and a planar graph $H$, let $\mathcal{T}_n(H)$ be the family of all plane triangulations $T$ on $n$ vertices such that $T$ contains a subgraph isomorphic to $H$. The planar anti-Ramsey number of $H$, denoted $ar_{_\mathcal{P}}(n, H)$, is the maximum number of colors in an edge-coloring of a plane triangulation $T\in \mathcal{T}_n(H)$ such that $T$ contains no rainbow copy of $H$. In this paper we study planar anti-Ramsey numbers of matchings. For all $t\ge1$, let $M_t$ denote a matching of size $t$. We prove that for all $t\ge6$ and $n\ge 3t-6$, $2n+3t-15\le ar_{_{…
In this paper, we investigate analytically the properties of the disordered Bernoulli model of planar matching. This model is characterized by a topological phase transition, yielding complete planar matching solutions only above a critical density threshold. We develop a combinatorial procedure of arcs expansion that explicitly takes into account the contribution of short arcs, and allows to obtain an accurate analytical estimation of the critical value by reducing the global constrained problem to a set of local ones. As an application to a toy representation of the RNA secondary structures,…
A perfect pseudo-matching M in a cubic graph G is a spanning subgraph of G such that every component of M is isomorphic to K_2 or to K_1,3. In view of snarks G with dominating cycle C, this is a natural generalization of perfect matchings since G-E(C) is a perfect pseudo-matching. Of special interest are such M where the graph G/M is planar because such G have a cycle double cover. We show that various well known classes of snarks contain planarizing perfect pseudo-matchings, and that there are at least as many snarks with planarizing perfect pseudo-matchings as there are cyclically 5-edge-con…
The book embedding of a graph $G$ is to place the vertices of $G$ on the spine and draw the edges to the pages so that the edges in the same page do not cross with each other. A book embedding is matching if the vertices in the same page have maximum degree at most 1. The matching book thickness is the minimum number of pages in which a graph can be matching book embedded. A graph $G$ is dispersable if and only if $mbt(G)=Δ(G)$. In this paper, we prove that bipartite cubic planar graphs are dispersable.
We prove that a cubic graph with $m$ edges has an induced matching with at least $m/9$ edges. Our result generalizes a result for planar graphs due to Kang, Mnich, and Müller (Induced matchings in subcubic planar graphs, SIAM J. Discrete Math. 26 (2012) 1383-1411) and solves a conjecture of Henning and Rautenbach (Induced matchings in subcubic graphs without short cycles, to appear in Discrete Math.).
We discuss conjectures on Hamiltonicity in cubic graphs (Tait, Barnette, Tutte), on the dichromatic number of planar oriented graphs (Neumann-Lara), and on even graphs in digraphs whose contraction is strongly connected (Hochstättler). We show that all of them fit into the same framework related to cuts in matchings. This allows us to find a counterexample to the conjecture of Hochstättler and show that the conjecture of Neumann-Lara holds for all planar graphs on at most 26 vertices. Finally, we state a new conjecture on bipartite cubic oriented graphs, that naturally arises in this setting.
Consider a planar graph $G=(V,E)$ with polynomially bounded edge weight function $w:E\to [0, poly(n)]$. The main results of this paper are NC algorithms for the following problems: - minimum weight perfect matching in $G$, - maximum cardinality and maximum weight matching in $G$ when $G$ is bipartite, - maximum multiple-source multiple-sink flow in $G$ where $c:E\to [1, poly(n)]$ is a polynomially bounded edge capacity function, - minimum weight $f$-factor in $G$ where $f:V\to [1, poly(n)]$, - min-cost flow in $G$ where $c:E\to [1, poly(n)]$ is a polynomially bounded edge capacity function and…
Given a triangulation of a point set in the plane, a \emph{flip} deletes an edge $e$ whose removal leaves a convex quadrilateral, and replaces $e$ by the opposite diagonal of the quadrilateral. It is well known that any triangulation of a point set can be reconfigured to any other triangulation by some sequence of flips. We explore this question in the setting where each edge of a triangulation has a label, and a flip transfers the label of the removed edge to the new edge. It is not true that every labelled triangulation of a point set can be reconfigured to every other labelled triangulation…
A decomposition of a graph $G$ is a family of subgraphs of $G$ whose edge sets form a partition of $E(G)$. In this paper, we prove that every triangle-free planar graph $G$ can be decomposed into a $2$-degenerate graph and a matching. Consequently, every triangle-free planar graph $G$ has a matching $M$ such that $G-M$ is online 3-DP-colorable. This strengthens an earlier result in [R. Škrekovski, {\em A Grötzsch-Type Theorem for List Colourings with Impropriety One}, Combin. Prob. Comput. 8 (1999), 493-507] that every triangle-free planar graph is $1$-defective $3$-choosable.
For any finite set $\A$ of $n$ points in $\R^2$, we define a $(3n-3)$-dimensional simple polyhedron whose face poset is isomorphic to the poset of ``non-crossing marked graphs'' with vertex set $\A$, where a marked graph is defined as a geometric graph together with a subset of its vertices. The poset of non-crossing graphs on $\A$ appears as the complement of the star of a face in that polyhedron. The polyhedron has a unique maximal bounded face, of dimension $2n_i +n -3$ where $n_i$ is the number of points of $\A$ in the interior of $\conv(\A)$. The vertices of this polytope are all the pseu…
In this article, Temperley's bijection between spanning trees of the square grid on the one hand, and perfect matchings (also known as dimer coverings) of the square grid on the other, is extended to the setting of general planar directed (and undirected) graphs, where edges carry nonnegative weights that induce a weighting on the set of spanning trees. We show that the weighted, directed spanning trees (often called arborescences) of any planar graph G can be put into a one-to-one weight-preserving correspondence with the perfect matchings of a related planar graph H. One special case of this…
Planar bicolored (plabic) graphs are combinatorial objects introduced by Postnikov to give parameterizations of the positroid cells of the totally nonnegative Grassmannian $\text{Gr}^{\geq 0}(n,k)$. Any two plabic graphs for the same positroid cell can be related by a sequence of certain moves. The flip graph has plabic graphs as vertices and has edges connecting the plabic graphs which are related by a single move. A recent result of Galashin shows that plabic graphs can be seen as cross-sections of zonotopal tilings for the cyclic zonotope $Z(n,3)$. Taking this perspective, we show that the …
Flip graphs are a ubiquitous class of graphs, which encode relations induced on a set of combinatorial objects by elementary, local changes. Skeletons of associahedra, for instance, are the graphs induced by quadrilateral flips in triangulations of a convex polygon. For some definition of a flip graph, a natural computational problem to consider is the flip distance: Given two objects, what is the minimum number of flips needed to transform one into the other? We consider flip graphs on orientations of simple graphs, where flips consist of reversing the direction of some edges. More precisely,…
Perfect Matching-Cut is the problem of deciding whether a graph has a perfect matching that contains an edge-cut. We show that this problem is NP-complete for planar graphs with maximum degree four, for planar graphs with girth five, for bipartite five-regular graphs, for graphs of diameter three and for bipartite graphs of diameter four. We show that there exist polynomial time algorithms for the following classes of graphs: claw-free, $P_5$-free, diameter two, bipartite with diameter three and graphs with bounded tree-width.
List coloring $C_3$-free planar graphs with a sparse matching of restricted lists
University of Colorado Denver（丹佛大学）；University of South Carolina（南卡罗来纳大学）；University of Virginia（弗吉尼亚大学）；University of Nebraska-Lincoln（内布拉斯加大学林肯分校）；Middle Tennessee State University（中田纳西州立大学）；University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）
