Wiki
Wiki

Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

Updated


Source. Section 4.17, printed pp. 459–460 (published PDF).

Statement. If TT is a Hungarian tree in GG with inner set II, then

ν(G)=∣I∣+ν(G−V(T)).\nu(G)=|I|+\nu(G-V(T)).

Thus a matching on the complement is maximum there exactly when its union with any maximum matching of TT is maximum in GG.

Proof. Combining disjoint maximum matchings of the tree and complement gives at least the stated size, by Section 4.2.

For an arbitrary matching LL, separate edges lying in the tree, edges lying in its vertex complement, and all remaining edges. Every remaining edge meets an inner vertex: an outer vertex has no neighbor other than an inner vertex of TT, and edges inside TT already go between the two classes. This also handles chords not among the tree edges.

Let I′I' be the inner vertices met by remaining edges. Their number is at least the number of these edges, as LL is a matching. The edges of LL that lie in the tree avoid I′I' and use distinct vertices of I∖I′I\setminus I', so their number is at most ∣I∣−∣I′∣|I|-|I'|. There are at most ν(G−V(T))\nu(G-V(T)) edges entirely in the complement. Adding the three bounds proves the equality.

A nonmaximum matching in the complement can plainly be improved without changing the disjoint tree matching; the equality proves the converse. □\square