Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

Let GG be a weighted bipartite graph ABA \cup B, with A=B=n|A|=|B|=n. In other words, each edge in the graph is assigned a positive integer value, called its weight. Also, define the weight of a perfect matching in GG to be the sum of the weights of the edges in the matching.
Let GG' be the graph with vertex set ABA \cup B, and contains the edge ee if and only if ee is part of some minimum weight perfect matching in GG.
Show that all perfect matchings in GG' have the same weight.

Solution

Solution:

Let mm denote the minimum weight of a matching in GG. Let GG'' be the (multi)graph formed by taking the union of all minimum weight perfect matchings, but keeping edges multiple times. Note that GG'' is regular. Now, assume that some perfect matching in GG' (equivalently GG'') has weight M>mM > m. Delete this matching from GG'', and call the resulting graph HH. HH is still regular, so it can be decomposed into a union of perfect matchings. Now using pigeonhole directly gives us a contradiction.

To show that all regular bipartite graphs can be decomposed into a union of perfect matchings, use Hall's marriage lemma to take out one perfect matching and use induction.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.