A graph is {\em perfect} if, in all its induced subgraphs, the size of a largest clique is equal to the chromatic number. Examples of perfect graphs include bipartite graphs, line graphs of bipartite graphs and the complements of such graphs. These four classes of perfect graphs will be called {\em basic}. In 1960, Berge formulated two conjectures about perfect graphs, one stronger than the other. The weak perfect graph conjecture, which states that a graph is perfect if and only if its complement is perfect, was proved in 1972 by Lovász. This result is now known as the perfect graph theorem. The strong perfect graph conjecture (SPGC) states that a graph is perfect if and only if it does not contain an odd hole or its complement. The SPGC has attracted a lot of attention. It was proved recently (May 2002) in a remarkable sequence of results by Chudnovsky, Robertson, Seymour and Thomas. The proof is difficult and, as of this writing, they are still checking the details. Here we give a flavor of the proof.
Dong and Wang in [Theor. Comput. Sci. 771 (2019) 93--98] conjectured that the resulting graph of the $n$-dimensional folded hypercube $FQ_n$ by deleting any perfect matching is isomorphic to the hypercube $Q_n$. In this paper, we show that the conjecture holds when $n=2,3$, and it is not true for $n\geq4$.
In this paper we prove Ahlswede- Khachatrian conjecture~\cite{1} up to finite number of cases, which can be checked using modern computers. From this conjecture follows conjecture from~\cite{2} and Manickam-Miklós-Singhi conjecture. This paper is combined from papers~\cite{09},~\cite{08}.
We prove that for a line perfect multigraph the chromatic index is equal to the list chromatic index. This is a generalization of Galvin's result on bipartite multigraphs. Soon after the first version was submitted to arxiv, I found out that the same result has already been achieved in an older paper by Peterson and Woodall, by a similar but not entirely the same method.
We prove a new upper bound for the minimum $d$-degree threshold for perfect matchings in $k$-uniform hypergraphs when $d<k/2$. As a consequence, this determines exact values of the threshold when $0.42k \le d < k/2$ or when $(k,d)=(12,5)$ or $(17,7)$. Our approach is to give an upper bound on the Erdős Matching Conjecture and convert the result to the minimum $d$-degree setting by an approach of Kühn, Osthus and Townsend. To obtain exact thresholds, we also apply a result of Treglown and Zhao.
It has been conjectured that for every claw-free graph $G$ the choice number of $G$ is equal to its chromatic number. We focus on the special case of this conjecture where $G$ is perfect. Claw-free perfect graphs can be decomposed via clique-cutset into two special classes called elementary graphs and peculiar graphs. Based on this decomposition we prove that the conjecture holds true for every claw-free perfect graph with maximum clique size at most $4$.
An {\sf oriented perfect path double cover} ($\rm OPPDC$) of a graph $G$ is a collection of directed paths in the symmetric orientation $G_s$ of $G$ such that each edge of $G_s$ lies in exactly one of the paths and each vertex of $G$ appears just once as a beginning and just once as an end of a path. Maxov{á} and Ne{š}et{ř}il (Discrete Math. 276 (2004) 287-294) conjectured that every graph except two complete graphs $K_3$ and $K_5$ has an $\rm OPPDC$ and they proved that the minimum degree of the minimal counterexample to this conjecture is at least four. In this paper, among some other result…
Lovasz and Plummer conjectured that there exists a fixed positive constant c such that every cubic n-vertex graph with no cutedge has at least 2^(cn) perfect matchings. Their conjecture has been verified for bipartite graphs by Voorhoeve and planar graphs by Chudnovsky and Seymour. We prove that every claw-free cubic n-vertex graph with no cutedge has more than 2^(n/12) perfect matchings, thus verifying the conjecture for claw-free graphs.
Berge Conjecture states that every bridgeless cubic graph has 5 perfect matchings such that each edge is contained in at least one of them. In this paper, we show that Berge Conjecture holds for two classes of cubic graphs, cubic graphs with a circuit missing only one vertex and bridgeless cubic graphs with a 2-factor consisting of two circuits. The first part of this result implies that Berge Conjecture holds for hypohamiltonian cubic graphs.
Let $G$ be a bridgeless cubic graph. The Berge--Fulkerson Conjecture (1970s) states that $G$ admits a list of six perfect matchings such that each edge of $G$ belongs to exactly two of these perfect matchings. If answered in the affirmative, two other recent conjectures would also be true: the Fan--Raspaud Conjecture (1994), which states that $G$ admits three perfect matchings such that every edge of $G$ belongs to at most two of them; and a conjecture by Mazzuoccolo (2013), which states that $G$ admits two perfect matchings whose deletion yields a bipartite subgraph of $G$. It can be shown th…
In 1977 Stanley proved that the $h$-vector of a matroid is an $\mathcal{O}$-sequence and conjectured that it is a pure $\mathcal{O}$-sequence. In the subsequent years the validity of this conjecture has been shown for a variety of classes of matroids, though the general case is still open. In this paper we use Las Vergnas' internal order to introduce a new class of matroids which we call internally perfect. We prove that these matroids satisfy Stanley's Conjecture and compare them to other classes of matroids for which the conjecture is known to hold. We also prove that, up to a certain restri…
Suppose $k\nmid n$ and $H$ is an $n$-vertex $k$-uniform hypergraph. A near perfect matching in $H$ is a matching of size $\lfloor n/k\rfloor$. We give a divisibility barrier construction that prevents the existence of near perfect matchings in $H$. This generalizes the divisibility barrier for perfect matchings. We give a conjecture on the minimum $d$-degree threshold forcing a (near) perfect matching in $H$ which generalizes a well-known conjecture on perfect matchings. We also verify our conjecture in various cases. Our proof makes use of the lattice-based absorbing method that the author us…
A graph G is perfect if for every induced subgraph H, the chromatic number of H equals the size of the largest complete subgraph of H, and G is Berge if no induced subgraph of G is an odd cycle of length at least 5 or the complement of one. The "strong perfect graph conjecture" (Berge, 1961) asserts that a graph is perfect if and only if it is Berge. A stronger conjecture was made recently by Conforti, Cornuejols and Vuskovic -- that every Berge graph either falls into one of a few basic classes, or it has a kind of separation that cannot occur in a minimal imperfect graph. In this paper we pr…
The Golomb--Welch conjecture states that there are no perfect $e$-error-correcting codes in $\mathbb{Z}^n$ for $n \ge 3$ and $e \ge 2$. In this note, we prove the nonexistence of perfect $2$-error-correcting codes for a certain class of $n$, which is expected to be infinite. This result further substantiates the Golomb--Welch conjecture.
We show that the number of positive integers $n\leq N$ such that $\mathbb{Z}/(n^2+n+1)\mathbb{Z}$ contains a perfect difference set is asymptotically $N/\log{N}$.
This paper studies non-crossing geometric perfect matchings. Two such perfect matchings are \emph{compatible} if they have the same vertex set and their union is also non-crossing. Our first result states that for any two perfect matchings $M$ and $M'$ of the same set of $n$ points, for some $k\in\Oh{\log n}$, there is a sequence of perfect matchings $M=M_0,M_1,...,M_k=M'$, such that each $M_i$ is compatible with $M_{i+1}$. This improves the previous best bound of $k\leq n-2$. We then study the conjecture: \emph{every perfect matching with an even number of edges has an edge-disjoint compatibl…
A conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson (1971) states that every cubic bridgeless graph contains 6 perfect matchings covering each edge precisely twice, which easily implies that every cubic bridgeless graph has three perfect matchings with empty intersection (this weaker statement was conjectured by Fan and Raspaud in 1994). Let $m_t$ be the supremum of all reals $α\le 1$ such that for every cubic bridgeless graph $G$, there exist $t$ perfect matchings of $G$ covering a fraction of at least $α$ of the edges of $G$. It is known that the Berge-Fulkerson conjecture is equivalent to the statement tha…
The subject of this contribution is the study of the Lovász-Schrijver PSD-operator N+ applied to the edge relaxation of the stable set polytope of a graph. We are particularly interested in the problem of characterizing graphs for which N+ generates the stable set polytope in one step, called N+-perfect graphs. It is conjectured that the only N+-perfect graphs are those whose stable set polytope is described by inequalities with near-bipartite support. So far, this conjecture has been proved for near-perfect graphs, fs-perfect graphs, and webs. Here, we verify it for line graphs, by proving th…
We prove that one can perfectly pack degenerate graphs into complete or dense $n$-vertex quasirandom graphs, provided that all the degenerate graphs have maximum degree $o(\frac{n}{\log n})$, and in addition $Ω(n)$ of them have at most $(1-Ω(1))n$ vertices and $Ω(n)$ leaves. This proves Ringel's conjecture and the Gyárfás Tree Packing Conjecture for all but an exponentially small fraction of trees (or sequences of trees, respectively).
A family of perfect matchings of $K_{2n}$ is $t$-$intersecting$ if any two members share $t$ or more edges. We prove for any $t \in \mathbb{N}$ that every $t$-intersecting family of perfect matchings has size no greater than $(2(n-t) - 1)!!$ for sufficiently large $n$, and that equality holds if and only if the family is composed of all perfect matchings that contain a fixed set of $t$ disjoint edges. This is an asymptotic version of a conjecture of Godsil and Meagher that can be seen as the non-bipartite analogue of the Deza-Frankl conjecture proven by Ellis, Friedgut, and Pilpel.
Lovász and Plummer conjectured, in the mid 1970's, that every cubic graph G with no cutedge has an exponential in |V(G)| number of perfect matchings. In this work we show that every cubic planar graph G whose geometric dual graph is a stack triangulation has at least 3 times the golden ratio to |V(G)|/72 distinct perfect matchings. Our work builds on a novel approach relating Lovász and Plummer's conjecture and the number of so called groundstates of the widely studied Ising model from statistical physics.
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.
Let $D$ be a digraph. Given a set of vertices $S \subseteq V(D)$, an $S$-path partition $\mathcal{P}$ of $D$ is a collection of paths of $D$ such that $\{V(P) \colon P \in \mathcal{P}\}$ is a partition of $V(D)$ and $|V(P) \cap S| = 1$ for every $P \in \mathcal{P}$. We say that $D$ satisfies the $α$-property if, for every maximum stable set $S$ of $D$, there exists an $S$-path partition of $D$, and we say that $D$ is $α$-diperfect if every induced subdigraph of $D$ satisfies the $α$-property. A digraph $C$ is an anti-directed odd cycle if (i) the underlying graph of $C$ is a cycle $x_1x_2 \cdo…
We introduce, and partially resolve, a conjecture that brings a three-centuries-old derangements phenomenon and its much younger two-decades-old analogue under the same umbrella. Through a graph-theoretic lens, a derangement is a perfect matching in the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ with a disjoint perfect matching $M$ removed. Likewise, a deranged matching is a perfect matching in the complete graph $K_{2n}$ minus a perfect matching $M'$. With $\mathrm{pm}(\cdot)$ counting perfect matchings, the elder phenomenon takes the form $\mathrm{pm}(K_{n,n}-M)/\mathrm{pm}(K_{n,n})\to 1/e$ as $n\to…
Win [\emph{J. Graph Theory} {\bf 6}(1982), 489--492] conjectured that a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices contains $k$ disjoint perfect matchings, if the degree sum of any two nonadjacent vertices is at least $n+k-2$, where $n$ is even and $n\geq k+2$. In this paper, we prove that Win's conjecture is true for $k\geq n/2$, where $n$ is sufficiently large. To show this result, we prove a theorem on $k$-factor in a graph under some Ore-type condition. Our main tools include Tutte's $k$-factor theorem, the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker theorem on convex optimization, and the solution to the longstanding 1-factor dec…
Let $M$ be a perfect matching in a graph. A subset $S$ of $M$ is said to be a forcing set of $M$, if $M$ is the only perfect matching in the graph that contains $S$. The minimum size of a forcing set of $M$ is called the forcing number of $M$. Pachter and Kim [Discrete Math. 190 (1998) 287--294] conjectured that the forcing number of every perfect matching in the $n$-dimensional hypercube is at least $2^{n-2}$, for all $n \ge 2$. Riddle [Discrete Math. 245 (2002) 283-292] proved this for even $n$. We show that the conjecture holds for all $n \ge 2$. The proof is based on simple linear algebra.
In 1965 Erdős asked, what is the largest size of a family of $k$-element subsets of an $n$-element set that does not have a matching of size $s+1$? In this note, we improve upon a recent result of Frankl and resolve this problem for $s>101k^{3}$ and $(s+1)k\le n<(s+1)(k+\frac{1}{100k})$.
It is conjectured by Golomb and Welch around half a century ago that there is no perfect Lee codes $C$ of packing radius $r$ in $\mathbb{Z}^{n}$ for $r\geq2$ and $n\geq 3$. Recently, Leung and the second author proved this conjecture for linear Lee codes with $r=2$. A natural question is whether it is possible to classify the second best, i.e., almost perfect linear Lee codes of packing radius $2$. We show that if such codes exist in $\mathbb{Z}^n$, then $n$ must be $1,2, 11, 29, 47, 56, 67, 79, 104, 121, 134$ or $191$.
A conjecture of Berge suggests that every bridgeless cubic graph can have its edges covered with at most five perfect matchings. Since three perfect matchings suffice only when the graph in question is $3$-edge-colourable, the rest of cubic graphs falls into two classes: those that can be covered with four perfect matchings, and those that need at least five. Cubic graphs that require more than four perfect matchings to cover their edges are particularly interesting as potential counterexamples to several profound and long-standing conjectures including the celebrated cycle double cover conjec…
The perfect matching index of a cubic graph $G$, denoted by $π(G)$, is the smallest number of perfect matchings that cover all the edges of $G$. According to the Berge-Fulkerson conjecture, $π(G)\le5$ for every bridgeless cubic graph~$G$. The class of graphs with $π\ge 5$ is of particular interest as many conjectures and open problems, including the famous cycle double cover conjecture, can be reduced to it. Although nontrivial examples of such graphs are very difficult to find, a few infinite families are known, all with circular flow number $Φ_c(G)=5$. It has been therefore suggested [Electr…
A Skolem sequence is a sequence a_1,a_2,...,a_2n (where a_i \in A = {1,...,n }), each a_i occurs exactly twice in the sequence and the two occurrences are exactly a_i positions apart. A set A that can be used to construct Skolem sequences is called a Skolem set. The problem of deciding which sets of the form A = {1,...,n} are Skolem sets was solved by Thoralf Skolem in the late 1950's. We study the natural generalization where A is allowed to be any set of n positive integers. We give necessary conditions for the existence of Skolem sets of this generalized form. We conjecture these necessary …
In the last decade there have been many results about special families of graphs whose number of perfect matchings is given by perfect or near perfect powers. In this paper we present an approach that allows proving them in a unified way. We use this approach to prove a conjecture of James Propp stating that the number of tilings of the so-called Aztec dungeon regions is a power (or twice a power) of 13. We also prove a conjecture of Matt Blum stating that the number of perfect matchings of a certain family of subgraphs of the square lattice is a power of 3 or twice a power of 3. In addition w…
In 1994, it was conjectured by Fan and Raspaud that every simple bridgeless cubic graph has three perfect matchings whose intersection is empty. In this paper we answer a question recently proposed by Mkrtchyan and Vardanyan, by giving an equivalent formulation of the Fan-Raspaud Conjecture. We also study a possibly weaker conjecture originally proposed by the first author, which states that in every simple bridgeless cubic graph there exist two perfect matchings such that the complement of their union is a bipartite graph. Here, we show that this conjecture can be equivalently stated using a …
A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have distinct colours. The study of rainbow subgraphs goes back more than two hundred years to the work of Euler on Latin squares and has been the focus of extensive research ever since. Euler posed a problem equivalent to finding properly $n$-edge-coloured complete bipartite graphs $K_{n,n}$ which can be decomposed into rainbow perfect matchings. While there are proper edge-colourings of $K_{n,n}$ without even a single rainbow perfect matching, the theme of this paper is to show that with some very weak additional constra…
A graph is strongly perfect if every induced subgraph H has a stable set that meets every maximal clique of H. A graph is claw-free if no vertex has three pairwise non-adjacent neighbors. The characterization of claw-free graphs that are strongly perfect by a set of forbidden induced subgraphs was conjectured by Ravindra in 1990 and was proved by Wang in 2006. Here we give a shorter proof of this characterization.
In this paper we study conditions which guarantee the existence of perfect matchings and perfect fractional matchings in uniform hypergraphs. We reduce this problem to an old conjecture by Erdős on estimating the maximum number of edges in a hypergraph when the (fractional) matching number is given, which we are able to solve in some special cases using probabilistic techniques. Based on these results, we obtain some general theorems on the minimum $d$-degree ensuring the existence of perfect (fractional) matchings. In particular, we asymptotically determine the minimum vertex degree which gua…
We consider several new families of graphs obtained from Aztec rectangle and augmented Aztec rectangle graphs by trimming two opposite corners. We prove that the perfect matchings of these new graphs are enumerated by powers of $2$, $3$, $5$, and $11$. The result yields a proof of a conjectured posed by Ciucu. In addition, we reveal a hidden relation between our graphs and the hexagonal dungeons introduced by Blum.
The minimum co-degree threshold for a perfect matching in a $k$-graph with $n$ vertices was determined by Rödl, Ruciński and Szemerédi for the case when $n\equiv 0\pmod k$. Recently, Han resolved the remaining cases when $n \not\equiv 0\pmod k$, establishing a conjecture of Rödl, Ruciński and Szemerédi. In this paper, we determine the minimum co-degree threshold for almost perfect matchings in $k$-partite $k$-graphs, answering a question of Rödl and Ruciński.
The classical Berge-Fulkerson conjecture states that any bridgeless cubic graph $G$ admits a list of six perfect matchings such that each edge of $G$ belongs to two of the perfect matchings from the list. In this short note, we discuss two statements that are consequences of this conjecture. We show that the first statement is equivalent to Fan-Raspaud conjecture. We also show that the smallest counter-example to the second one is a cyclically $4$-edge-connected cubic graph.
We show that every cubic bridgeless graph G has at least 2^(|V(G)|/3656) perfect matchings. This confirms an old conjecture of Lovasz and Plummer. This version of the paper uses a different definition of a burl from the journal version of the paper and a different proof of Lemma 18 is given. This simplifies the exposition of our arguments throughout the whole paper.
The Lagrangian density of an $r$-uniform hypergraph $F$ is $r!$ multiplying the supremum of the Lagrangians of all $F$-free $r$-uniform hypergraphs. For an $r$-graph $H$ with $t$ vertices, it is clear that $π_λ(H)\ge r!λ{(K_{t-1}^r)}$. We say that an $r$-unform hypergraph $H$ with $t$ vertices is perfect if $π_λ(H)= r!λ{(K_{t-1}^r)}$. A theorem of Motzkin-Straus implies that all $2$-uniform graphs are perfect. It is interesting to explore what kind of hypergraphs are perfect. A hypergraph is linear if any 2 edges have at most 1 vertex in common. We propose the following conjecture: (1) For $r\…
A decomposition of a graph is a set of subgraphs whose edges partition those of $G$. The 3-decomposition conjecture posed by Hoffmann-Ostenhof in 2011 states that every connected cubic graph can be decomposed into a spanning tree, a 2-regular subgraph, and a matching. It has been settled for special classes of graphs, one of the first results being for Hamiltonian graphs. In the past two years several new results have been obtained, adding the classes of plane, claw-free, and 3-connected tree-width 3 graphs to the list. In this paper, we regard a natural extension of Hamiltonian graphs: removi…
The celebrated Hajnal-Szemerédi theorem gives the precise minimum degree threshold that forces a graph to contain a perfect K_k-packing. Fischer's conjecture states that the analogous result holds for all multipartite graphs except for those formed by a single construction. Recently, we deduced an approximate version of this conjecture from new results on perfect matchings in hypergraphs. In this paper, we apply a stability analysis to the extremal cases of this argument, thus showing that the exact conjecture holds for any sufficiently large graph.
The Lagrangian density of an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ is $r!$ multiplying the supremum of the Lagrangians of all $H$-free $r$-uniform hypergraphs. For an $r$-uniform graph $H$ with $t$ vertices, it is clear that $π_λ(H)\ge r!λ{(K_{t-1}^r)}$. We say that an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ with $t$ vertices is $λ$-perfect if $π_λ(H)= r!λ{(K_{t-1}^r)}$. A theorem of Motzkin and Straus implies that all $2$-uniform graphs are $λ$-perfect. It is interesting to understand what kind of hypergraphs are $λ$-perfect. The property `$λ$-perfect' is monotone in the sense that an $r$-graph obtained by removing …
