On Distance-3 Matchings and Induced Matchings

  • Authors:

  • Andreas Brandstädt;Raffaele Mosca

  • Affiliations:

  • Institut für Informatik, Universität Rostock, Rostock, Germany D-18051;Dipartimento di Scienze, Universitá degli Studi "G. D'Annunzio", Pescara, Italy 65121

  • Venue:
  • Graph Theory, Computational Intelligence and Thought
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

For a finite undirected graph G = (V ,E ) and positive integer k *** 1, an edge set M *** E is a distance-k matching if the mutual distance of edges in M is at least k in G . For k = 1, this gives the usual notion of matching in graphs, and for general k *** 1, distance-k matchings were called k-separated matchings by Stockmeyer and Vazirani. The special case k = 2 has been studied under the names induced matching (i.e., a matching which forms an induced subgraph in G ) by Cameron and strong matching by Golumbic and Laskar in various papers. Finding a maximum induced matching is $\mathbb{NP}$-complete even on very restricted bipartite graphs but for k = 2, it can be done efficiently on various classes of graphs such as chordal graphs, based on the fact that an induced matching in G corresponds to an independent vertex set in the square L (G )2 of the line graph L (G ) of G which, by a result of Cameron, is chordal for any chordal graph G . We show that, unlike for k = 2, for a chordal graph G , L (G )3 is not necessarily chordal, and finding a maximum distance-3 matching remains $\mathbb{NP}$-complete on chordal graphs. For strongly chordal graphs and interval graphs, however, the maximum distance-3 matching problem can be solved in polynomial time. Moreover, we obtain various new results for induced matchings.