Hall-type theorems for hypergraphs

In the mathematical field of graph theory, Hall-type theorems for hypergraphs are several generalizations of Hall's marriage theorem from graphs to hypergraphs. Such theorems were proved by Ofra Kessler, Ron Aharoni, Penny Haxell, Roy Meshulam, and others. Hall's marriage theorem provides a condition guaranteeing that a bipartite graph (X + Y, E) admits a perfect matching, or - more generally - a matching that saturates all vertices of Y. The condition involves the number of neighbors of subsets of Y. Generalizing Hall's theorem to hypergraphs requires a generalization of the concepts of bipartiteness, perfect matching, and neighbors.

1. Bipartiteness: The notion of a bipartiteness can be extended to hypergraphs in many ways (see bipartite hypergraph). Here we define a hypergraph as bipartite if it is exactly 2-colorable, i.e., its vertices can be 2-colored such that each hyperedge contains exactly one yellow vertex. In other words, V can be partitioned into two sets X and Y, such that each hyperedge contains exactly one vertex of Y. A bipartite graph is a special case in which each edge contains exactly one vertex of Y and also exactly one vertex of X; in a bipartite hypergraph, each hyperedge contains exactly one vertex of Y but may contain zero or more vertices of X. For example, the hypergraph (V, E) with V = {1,2,3,4,5,6} and E = { {1,2,3}, {1,2,4}, {1,3,4}, {5,2}, {5,3,4,6} } is bipartite with Y = {1,5} and X = {2,3,4,6}.
2. Perfect matching: A matching in a hypergraph H = (V, E) is a subset F of E, such that every two hyperedges of F are disjoint. If H is bipartite with parts X and Y, then the size of each matching is obviously at most . A matching is called Y-perfect (or Y-saturating) if its size is exactly . In other words: every vertex of Y appears in exactly one hyperedge of M. This definition reduces to the standard definition of a Y-perfect matching in a bipartite graph.
3. Neighbors: Given a bipartite hypergraph H = (X + Y, E) and a subset Y_0 of Y, the neighbors of Y_0 are the subsets of X that share hyperedges with vertices of Y_0.