ACYCLIC MATCHINGS IN SUBCLASSES OF BIPARTITE GRAPHS

Abstract

A set M ⊆ E is called an acyclic matching of a graph G = (V, E) if no two edges in M are adjacent and the subgraph induced by the set of end vertices of the edges of M is acyclic. Given a positive integer k and a graph G = (V, E), the acyclic matching problem is to decide whether G has an acyclic matching of cardinality at least k. Goddard et al. (Discrete Math.293(1–3) (2005) 129–138) introduced the concept of the acyclic matching problem and proved that the acyclic matching problem is NP-complete for general graphs. In this paper, we propose an O(n + m) time algorithm to find a maximum cardinality acyclic matching in a chain graph having n vertices and m edges and obtain an expression for the number of maximum cardinality acyclic matchings in a chain graph. We also propose a dynamic programming-based O(n + m) time algorithm to find a maximum cardinality acyclic matching in a bipartite permutation graph having n vertices and m edges. Finally, we strengthen the complexity result of the acyclic matching problem by showing that this problem remains NP-complete for perfect elimination bipartite graphs.