English

Trees maximizing the number of almost-perfect matchings

Combinatorics 2025-02-24 v2

Abstract

We characterize the extremal trees that maximize the number of almost-perfect matchings, which are matchings covering all but one or two vertices, and those that maximize the number of strong almost-perfect matchings, which are matchings missing only one or two leaves. We also determine the trees that minimize the number of maximal matchings. We apply these results to extremal problems on the weighted Hosoya index for several choices of vertex-degree-based weight function.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.03408,
  title  = {Trees maximizing the number of almost-perfect matchings},
  author = {Stijn Cambie and Bradley McCoy and Gunjan Sharma and Stephan Wagner and Corrine Yap},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.03408},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages, 8 figures