English

Counting perfect matchings of cubic graphs in the geometric dual

Combinatorics 2010-10-29 v1

Abstract

Lov\'asz 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 Lov\'asz and Plummer's conjecture and the number of so called groundstates of the widely studied Ising model from statistical physics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1010.5918,
  title  = {Counting perfect matchings of cubic graphs in the geometric dual},
  author = {Andrea Jiménez and Marcos Kiwi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.5918},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

18 pages, 8 figures