English

2-Colorable Perfect Matching is NP-complete in 2-Connected 3-Regular Planar Graphs

Computational Complexity 2023-09-19 v1

Abstract

The 2-colorable perfect matching problem asks whether a graph can be colored with two colors so that each node has exactly one neighbor with the same color as itself. We prove that this problem is NP-complete, even when restricted to 2-connected 3-regular planar graphs. In 1978, Schaefer proved that this problem is NP-complete in general graphs, and claimed without proof that the same result holds when restricted to 3-regular planar graphs. Thus we fill in the missing proof of this claim, while simultaneously strengthening to 2-connected graphs (which implies existence of a perfect matching). We also prove NP-completeness of kk-colorable perfect matching, for any fixed k2k \geq 2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.09786,
  title  = {2-Colorable Perfect Matching is NP-complete in 2-Connected 3-Regular Planar Graphs},
  author = {Erik D. Demaine and Kritkorn Karntikoon and Nipun Pitimanaaree},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.09786},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

11 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:24:50.137Z