Matching (graph theory)In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, a matching or independent edge set in an undirected graph is a set of edges without common vertices. In other words, a subset of the edges is a matching if each vertex appears in at most one edge of that matching. Finding a matching in a bipartite graph can be treated as a network flow problem. Given a graph G = (V, E), a matching M in G is a set of pairwise non-adjacent edges, none of which are loops; that is, no two edges share common vertices.
Matching in hypergraphsIn graph theory, a matching in a hypergraph is a set of hyperedges, in which every two hyperedges are disjoint. It is an extension of the notion of matching in a graph. Recall that a hypergraph H is a pair (V, E), where V is a set of vertices and E is a set of subsets of V called hyperedges. Each hyperedge may contain one or more vertices. A matching in H is a subset M of E, such that every two hyperedges e_1 and e_2 in M have an empty intersection (have no vertex in common).
Petersen graphIn the mathematical field of graph theory, the Petersen graph is an undirected graph with 10 vertices and 15 edges. It is a small graph that serves as a useful example and counterexample for many problems in graph theory. The Petersen graph is named after Julius Petersen, who in 1898 constructed it to be the smallest bridgeless cubic graph with no three-edge-coloring. Although the graph is generally credited to Petersen, it had in fact first appeared 12 years earlier, in a paper by .
Graph rewritingIn computer science, graph transformation, or graph rewriting, concerns the technique of creating a new graph out of an original graph algorithmically. It has numerous applications, ranging from software engineering (software construction and also software verification) to layout algorithms and picture generation. Graph transformations can be used as a computation abstraction. The basic idea is that if the state of a computation can be represented as a graph, further steps in that computation can then be represented as transformation rules on that graph.
Bipartite graphIn the mathematical field of graph theory, a bipartite graph (or bigraph) is a graph whose vertices can be divided into two disjoint and independent sets and , that is, every edge connects a vertex in to one in . Vertex sets and are usually called the parts of the graph. Equivalently, a bipartite graph is a graph that does not contain any odd-length cycles. The two sets and may be thought of as a coloring of the graph with two colors: if one colors all nodes in blue, and all nodes in red, each edge has endpoints of differing colors, as is required in the graph coloring problem.
Line graphIn the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the line graph of an undirected graph G is another graph L(G) that represents the adjacencies between edges of G. L(G) is constructed in the following way: for each edge in G, make a vertex in L(G); for every two edges in G that have a vertex in common, make an edge between their corresponding vertices in L(G). The name line graph comes from a paper by although both and used the construction before this.
Kőnig's theorem (graph theory)In the mathematical area of graph theory, Kőnig's theorem, proved by , describes an equivalence between the maximum matching problem and the minimum vertex cover problem in bipartite graphs. It was discovered independently, also in 1931, by Jenő Egerváry in the more general case of weighted graphs. A vertex cover in a graph is a set of vertices that includes at least one endpoint of every edge, and a vertex cover is minimum if no other vertex cover has fewer vertices.
Maximum cardinality matchingMaximum cardinality matching is a fundamental problem in graph theory. We are given a graph G, and the goal is to find a matching containing as many edges as possible; that is, a maximum cardinality subset of the edges such that each vertex is adjacent to at most one edge of the subset. As each edge will cover exactly two vertices, this problem is equivalent to the task of finding a matching that covers as many vertices as possible.
Chordal graphIn the mathematical area of graph theory, a chordal graph is one in which all cycles of four or more vertices have a chord, which is an edge that is not part of the cycle but connects two vertices of the cycle. Equivalently, every induced cycle in the graph should have exactly three vertices. The chordal graphs may also be characterized as the graphs that have perfect elimination orderings, as the graphs in which each minimal separator is a clique, and as the intersection graphs of subtrees of a tree.
List of graphsThis partial list of graphs contains definitions of graphs and graph families. For collected definitions of graph theory terms that do not refer to individual graph types, such as vertex and path, see Glossary of graph theory. For links to existing articles about particular kinds of graphs, see . Some of the finite structures considered in graph theory have names, sometimes inspired by the graph's topology, and sometimes after their discoverer.
Rainbow matchingIn the mathematical discipline of graph theory, a rainbow matching in an edge-colored graph is a matching in which all the edges have distinct colors. Given an edge-colored graph G = (V,E), a rainbow matching M in G is a set of pairwise non-adjacent edges, that is, no two edges share a common vertex, such that all the edges in the set have distinct colors. A maximum rainbow matching is a rainbow matching that contains the largest possible number of edges. Rainbow matchings are of particular interest given their connection to transversals of Latin squares.
Planar graphIn graph theory, a planar graph is a graph that can be embedded in the plane, i.e., it can be drawn on the plane in such a way that its edges intersect only at their endpoints. In other words, it can be drawn in such a way that no edges cross each other. Such a drawing is called a plane graph or planar embedding of the graph. A plane graph can be defined as a planar graph with a mapping from every node to a point on a plane, and from every edge to a plane curve on that plane, such that the extreme points of each curve are the points mapped from its end nodes, and all curves are disjoint except on their extreme points.
Topological graph theoryIn mathematics, topological graph theory is a branch of graph theory. It studies the embedding of graphs in surfaces, spatial embeddings of graphs, and graphs as topological spaces. It also studies immersions of graphs. Embedding a graph in a surface means that we want to draw the graph on a surface, a sphere for example, without two edges intersecting. A basic embedding problem often presented as a mathematical puzzle is the three utilities problem.
Stable marriage problemIn mathematics, economics, and computer science, the stable marriage problem (also stable matching problem or SMP) is the problem of finding a stable matching between two equally sized sets of elements given an ordering of preferences for each element. A matching is a bijection from the elements of one set to the elements of the other set. A matching is not stable if: In other words, a matching is stable when there does not exist any pair (A, B) which both prefer each other to their current partner under the matching.
Regular graphIn graph theory, a regular graph is a graph where each vertex has the same number of neighbors; i.e. every vertex has the same degree or valency. A regular directed graph must also satisfy the stronger condition that the indegree and outdegree of each internal vertex are equal to each other. A regular graph with vertices of degree k is called a k‐regular graph or regular graph of degree k. Also, from the handshaking lemma, a regular graph contains an even number of vertices with odd degree.
Complete graphIn the mathematical field of graph theory, a complete graph is a simple undirected graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a unique edge. A complete digraph is a directed graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a pair of unique edges (one in each direction). Graph theory itself is typically dated as beginning with Leonhard Euler's 1736 work on the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. However, drawings of complete graphs, with their vertices placed on the points of a regular polygon, had already appeared in the 13th century, in the work of Ramon Llull.
Connectivity (graph theory)In mathematics and computer science, connectivity is one of the basic concepts of graph theory: it asks for the minimum number of elements (nodes or edges) that need to be removed to separate the remaining nodes into two or more isolated subgraphs. It is closely related to the theory of network flow problems. The connectivity of a graph is an important measure of its resilience as a network. In an undirected graph G, two vertices u and v are called connected if G contains a path from u to v.
Independent set (graph theory)In graph theory, an independent set, stable set, coclique or anticlique is a set of vertices in a graph, no two of which are adjacent. That is, it is a set of vertices such that for every two vertices in , there is no edge connecting the two. Equivalently, each edge in the graph has at most one endpoint in . A set is independent if and only if it is a clique in the graph's complement. The size of an independent set is the number of vertices it contains. Independent sets have also been called "internally stable sets", of which "stable set" is a shortening.
Complement graphIn the mathematical field of graph theory, the complement or inverse of a graph G is a graph H on the same vertices such that two distinct vertices of H are adjacent if and only if they are not adjacent in G. That is, to generate the complement of a graph, one fills in all the missing edges required to form a complete graph, and removes all the edges that were previously there. The complement is not the set complement of the graph; only the edges are complemented. Let G = (V, E) be a simple graph and let K consist of all 2-element subsets of V.
Fractional matchingIn graph theory, a fractional matching is a generalization of a matching in which, intuitively, each vertex may be broken into fractions that are matched to different neighbor vertices. Given a graph G = (V, E), a fractional matching in G is a function that assigns, to each edge e in E, a fraction f(e) in [0, 1], such that for every vertex v in V, the sum of fractions of edges adjacent to v is at most 1: A matching in the traditional sense is a special case of a fractional matching, in which the fraction of every edge is either 0 or 1: f(e) = 1 if e is in the matching, and f(e) = 0 if it is not.
