English

Families with no perfect matchings

Combinatorics 2020-08-24 v2

Abstract

We consider families of kk-subsets of {1,,n}\{1, \dots, n\}, where nn is a multiple of kk, which have no perfect matching. An equivalent condition for a family F\mathcal{F} to have no perfect matching is for there to be a blocking set, which is a set of bb elements of {1,,n}\{1, \dots, n\} that cannot be covered by bb disjoint sets in F\mathcal{F}. We are specifically interested in the largest possible size of a family F\mathcal{F} with no perfect matching and no blocking set of size less than bb. Frankl resolved the case of families with no singleton blocking set (in other words, the b=2b=2 case) for sufficiently large nn and conjectured an optimal construction for general bb. Though Frankl's construction fails to be optimal for k=2,3k = 2, 3, we show that the construction is optimal whenever k100k \ge 100 and nn is sufficiently large.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.08792,
  title  = {Families with no perfect matchings},
  author = {Mihir Singhal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.08792},
  year   = {2020}
}