Paper 4, Section II, G

Graph Theory | Part II, 2019

State and prove Hall's theorem.

Let nn be an even positive integer. Let X={A:A⊂[n]}X=\{A: A \subset[n]\} be the power set of [n]={1,2,…,n}[n]=\{1,2, \ldots, n\}. For 1⩽i⩽n1 \leqslant i \leqslant n, let Xi={A∈X:∣A∣=i}X_{i}=\{A \in X:|A|=i\}. Let QQ be the graph with vertex set XX where A,B∈XA, B \in X are adjacent if and only if ∣A△B∣=1|A \triangle B|=1. [Here, A△BA \triangle B denotes the symmetric difference of AA and BB, given by A△B:=(A∪B)\(A∩B).]A \triangle B:=(A \cup B) \backslash(A \cap B) .]

Let 1⩽i⩽n21 \leqslant i \leqslant \frac{n}{2}. Why is the induced subgraph Q[Xi∪Xi−1]Q\left[X_{i} \cup X_{i-1}\right] bipartite? Show that it contains a matching from Xi−1X_{i-1} to XiX_{i}.

A chain in XX is a subset C⊂X\mathcal{C} \subset X such that whenever A,B∈CA, B \in \mathcal{C} we have A⊂BA \subset B or B⊂AB \subset A. What is the least positive integer kk such that XX can be partitioned into kk pairwise disjoint chains? Justify your answer.

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