English

On the balanced decomposition number

Combinatorics 2014-02-21 v3 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

A {\em balanced coloring} of a graph GG means a triple {P1,P2,X}\{P_1,P_2,X\} of mutually disjoint subsets of the vertex-set V(G)V(G) such that V(G)=P1P2XV(G)=P_1 \uplus P_2 \uplus X and P1=P2|P_1|=|P_2|. A {\em balanced decomposition} associated with the balanced coloring V(G)=P1P2XV(G)=P_1 \uplus P_2 \uplus X of GG is defined as a partition of V(G)=V1VrV(G)=V_1 \uplus \cdots \uplus V_r (for some rr) such that, for every i{1,,r}i \in \{1,\cdots,r\}, the subgraph G[Vi]G[V_i] of GG is connected and ViP1=ViP2|V_i \cap P_1| = |V_i \cap P_2|. Then the {\em balanced decomposition number} of a graph GG is defined as the minimum integer ss such that, for every balanced coloring V(G)=P1P2XV(G)=P_1 \uplus P_2 \uplus X of GG, there exists a balanced decomposition V(G)=V1VrV(G)=V_1 \uplus \cdots \uplus V_r whose every element Vi(i=1,,r)V_i (i=1, \cdots, r) has at most ss vertices. S. Fujita and H. Liu [\/SIAM J. Discrete Math. 24, (2010), pp. 1597--1616\/] proved a nice theorem which states that the balanced decomposition number of a graph GG is at most 33 if and only if GG is V(G)2\lfloor\frac{|V(G)|}{2}\rfloor-connected. Unfortunately, their proof is lengthy (about 10 pages) and complicated. Here we give an immediate proof of the theorem. This proof makes clear a relationship between balanced decomposition number and graph matching.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1212.2308,
  title  = {On the balanced decomposition number},
  author = {Tadashi Sakuma},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.2308},
  year   = {2014}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:52:05.222Z