Thursday, 19 April 2007

co.combinatorics - Red-blue alternating paths

I think even the stronger lemma is true where all paths will be edges:



Let G be a simple graph, Vk=v1,dots,vk a subset of vertices and we have deg(vi)geqi for all i=1,dots,k. Then there is a matching which covers Vk.



PROOF:



If there is no edge between vertices from Vk (so Vk is stable) then we can consider only the edges between Vk and VsetminusVk (the induced bipartite graph between Vk and VsetminusVk). The degree of the vertices from Vk in this bipartite graph will be the same as in the original graph, so the condition still holds. From this it follows that Vk satisfies the condition of Hall's marriage theorem thus there is a matching covering Vk. Indeed, let XsubseteqVk, and let vlinX be the vertex with the highest index in X. Then |X|leql. On the other hand all the neighbors of vl are in the neighborhood of X so deg(vl)leq|N(X)|. Combining these two observation with our condition of deg(vl)geql we get that |X|leq|N(X)|



If there is an edge (vivj), where vi,vjinVk, then let's choose such an edge where the sum of indexes i+j is the smallest possible and suppose that i<j. Let's delete vi and vj from the graph. All the other vertices from Vk can have their degree decrease with at most 2. If the degree of vl decreases by 1 then vl is a neighbor of vi or vj and because of i+j being minimal we have i<l. If the degree of vl decreases by 2 then vl is a neighbor of both vi and vj, and again, using that i+j is minimal we have i<j<l. This means that by adjusting the indexes for the remaining vertices in Vk in the natural way (vl remains vl if l<i, is renamed to vl1 if i<l<j and is renamed to vl2 if j<l), the Vk2 we got like this satisfies the degree condition deg(vi)geqi for all index i. By induction we are done in this case.

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