Related papers: The number of perfect matchings in a brick
A brick is a 3-connected graph such that the graph obtained from it by deleting any two distinct vertices has a perfect matching. A brick is minimal if for every edge e the deletion of e results in a graph that is not a brick. We prove a…
A connected graph G is matching covered if every edge lies in some perfect matching of G. Lovasz proved that every matching covered graph G can be uniquely decomposed into a list of bricks (nonbipartite) and braces (bipartite) up to…
A graph $G$ is a brick if it is 3-connected and $G-\{u,v\}$ has a perfect matching for any two distinct vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$. A brick $G$ is solid if for any two vertex disjoint odd cycles $C_1$ and $C_2$ of $G$, $G-(V(C_1)\cup…
A connected graph G with at least two vertices is matching covered if each of its edges lies in a perfect matching. We say that an edge e in a matching covered graph G is removable if G-e is matching covered. A pair {e; f} of edges of a…
A graph $G$ is a brick if it is 3-connected and $G-\{u,v\}$ has a perfect matching for any two distinct vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$. Lucchesi and Murty proposed a problem concerning the characterization of bricks, distinct from $K_4$,…
An $r$-graph is an $r$-regular graph with no odd cut of size less than $r$. A well-celebrated result due to Lov\'asz says that for such graphs the linear system $Ax = \textbf{1}$ has a solution in $\mathbb{Z}/2$, where $A$ is the $0,1$ edge…
Let $G$ be a connected graph with vertex set $V(G)=\{v_1,v_2,...,v_{\nu}\}$, which may have multiple edges but have no loops, and $2\leq d_G(v_i)\leq 3$ for $i=1,2,...,\nu$, where $d_G(v)$ denotes the degree of vertex $v$ of $G$. We show…
The 1970s conjecture of Lov\'asz and Plummer that the number of perfect matchings in any $3$-regular graph is exponential in the number of vertices was proved in 2011 by Esperet, Kardo\v{s}, King, Kr\'al', and Norine. We give the exact…
A {\em brick} is a non-bipartite matching covered graph without non-trivial tight cuts. Bricks are building blocks of matching covered graphs. We say that an edge $e$ in a brick $G$ is {\em $b$-invariant} if $G-e$ is matching covered and a…
A graph is Berge if it has no induced odd cycle on at least 5 vertices and no complement of induced odd cycle on at least 5 vertices. A graph is perfect if the chromatic number equals the maximum clique number for every induced subgraph.…
Let G be a bridgeless cubic graph. A well-known conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson can be stated as follows: there exist five perfect matchings of G such that each edge of G is contained in at least one of them. Here, we prove that in each…
A subgraph $G'$ of a graph $G$ is nice if $G-V(G')$ has a perfect matching. Nice subgraphs play a vital role in the theory of ear decomposition and matching minors of matching covered graphs. A vertex $u$ of a cubic graph is nice if $u$ and…
A cut $C:=\partial(X)$ of a matching covered graph $G$ is a separating cut if both its $C$-contractions $G/X$ and $G/\overline{X}$ are also matching covered. A brick is solid if it is free of nontrivial separating cuts. In 2004, we…
We discuss the question whether the existence of perfect matchings in a cubic graph can be seen from the spectrum of its adjacency matrix. For regular graphs in general and for three edge-disjoint perfect matchings in a cubic graph (that…
We show that every cubic bridgeless graph G has at least 2^(|V(G)|/3656) perfect matchings. This confirms an old conjecture of Lovasz and Plummer. This version of the paper uses a different definition of a burl from the journal version of…
Lov\'asz (1987) proved that every matching covered graph $G$ may be uniquely decomposed into a list of bricks (nonbipartite) and braces (bipartite); we let $b(G)$ denote the number of bricks. An edge $e$ is removable if $G-e$ is also…
A conjecture of Berge suggests that every bridgeless cubic graph can have its edges covered with at most five perfect matchings. Since three perfect matchings suffice only when the graph in question is $3$-edge-colourable, the rest of cubic…
We show that every cubic bridgeless graph with n vertices has at least 3n/4-10 perfect matchings. This is the first bound that differs by more than a constant from the maximal dimension of the perfect matching polytope.
{ An edge $e$ in a matching covered graph $G$ is {\em removable} if $G-e$ is matching covered, which was introduced by Lov\'asz and Plummer in connection with ear decompositions of matching covered graphs. A {\it brick}} is a non-bipartite…
Petersen's theorem, one of the earliest results in graph theory, states that any bridgeless cubic multigraph contains a perfect matching. While the original proof was neither constructive nor algorithmic, Biedl, Bose, Demaine, and Lubiw [J.…