Paper 1, Section II,
Part II, 2009
(i) State and prove Hall's theorem concerning matchings in bipartite graphs.
(ii) The matching number of a graph is the maximum size of a family of independent edges (edges without shared vertices) in . Deduce from Hall's theorem that if is a -regular bipartite graph on vertices (some ) then has matching number .
(iii) Now suppose that is an arbitrary -regular graph on vertices (some . Show that has a matching number at least . [Hint: Let be the set of vertices in a maximal set of independent edges. Consider the edges of with exactly one endpoint in .]
For , show that there are infinitely many graphs for which equality holds.