English

Splitting matchings and the Ryser-Brualdi-Stein conjecture for multisets

Combinatorics 2023-06-02 v2

Abstract

We study multigraphs whose edge-sets are the union of three perfect matchings, M1M_1, M2M_2, and M3M_3. Given such a graph GG and any a1,a2,a3Na_1,a_2,a_3\in \mathbb{N} with a1+a2+a3n2a_1+a_2+a_3\leq n-2, we show there exists a matching MM of GG with MMi=ai|M\cap M_i|=a_i for each i{1,2,3}i\in \{1,2,3\}. The bound n2n-2 in the theorem is best possible in general. We conjecture however that if GG is bipartite, the same result holds with n2n-2 replaced by n1n-1. We give a construction that shows such a result would be tight. We also make a conjecture generalising the Ryser-Brualdi-Stein conjecture with colour multiplicities.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.03100,
  title  = {Splitting matchings and the Ryser-Brualdi-Stein conjecture for multisets},
  author = {Michael Anastos and David Fabian and Alp Müyesser and Tibor Szabó},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.03100},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:23:48.096Z