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Concept
Kőnig's theorem (graph theory)
Summary
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. A matching in a graph is a set of edges no two of which share an endpoint, and a matching is maximum if no other matching has more edges.
It is obvious from the definition that any vertex-cover set must be at least as large as any matching set (since for every edge in the matching, at least one vertex is needed in the cover). In particular, the minimum vertex cover set is at least as large as the maximum matching set. Kőnig's theorem states that, in any bipartite graph, the minimum vertex cover set and the maximum matching set have in fact the same size.
In any bipartite graph, the number of edges in a maximum matching equals the number of vertices in a minimum vertex cover.
The bipartite graph shown in the above illustration has 14 vertices; a matching with six edges is shown in blue, and a vertex cover with six vertices is shown in red. There can be no smaller vertex cover, because any vertex cover has to include at least one endpoint of each matched edge (as well as of every other edge), so this is a minimum vertex cover. Similarly, there can be no larger matching, because any matched edge has to include at least one endpoint in the vertex cover, so this is a maximum matching. Kőnig's theorem states that the equality between the sizes of the matching and the cover (in this example, both numbers are six) applies more generally to any bipartite graph.
The following proof provides a way of constructing a minimum vertex cover from a maximum matching. Let be a bipartite graph and let be the two parts of the vertex set . Suppose that is a maximum matching for .
Official source
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