Graphs with large maximum forcing number
Abstract
For a graph with order and a perfect matching, let and denote the minimum and maximum forcing number of respectively. Then . Liu and Zhang [10] ever proposed a conjecture: , where denotes the number of edges of . In this paper we confirm this conjecture and obtain . If , Liu and Zhang [9] proved that any two perfect matchings of can be obtained from each other by a series of matching switches along 4-cycles. If is bipartite and , , we show that any two perfect matchings of can be obtained from each other by a series of matching switches along even cycles of length at most . Finally, we ask whether holds for such bipartite graphs , and give positive answers for the cases . Further we show all minimum forcing numbers of the bipartite graphs of order and with form an integer interval .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.22761,
title = {Graphs with large maximum forcing number},
author = {Qianqian Liu and Ajit A. Diwan and Heping Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.22761},
year = {2025}
}