English

Normality of $k$-Matching Polytopes of Bipartite Graphs

Combinatorics 2023-06-22 v1

Abstract

The kk-matching polytope of a graph is the convex hull of all its matchings of a given size kk when they are considered as indicator vectors. In this paper, we prove that the kk-matching polytope of a bipartite graph is normal, that is, every integer point in its tt-dilate is the sum of tt integers points of the original polytope. This generalizes the known fact that Birkhoff polytopes are normal. As a preliminary result, we prove that for bipartite graphs the kk-matching polytope is equal to the fractional kk-matching polytope, having thus the HH-representation of the polytope. This generalizes the Birkhoff-Von Neumann Theorem which establish that every doubly stochastic matrix can be written as a convex combination of permutation matrices.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.11910,
  title  = {Normality of $k$-Matching Polytopes of Bipartite Graphs},
  author = {Juan Camilo Torres},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.11910},
  year   = {2023}
}