The extendability of matchings in strongly regular graphs Sebastian M. Cioab˘a∗ Weiqiang Li Department of Mathematical Sciences Department of Mathematical Sciences University of Delaware University of Delaware Newark, DE 19707-2553, U.S.A. Newark, DE 19707-2553, U.S.A.
[email protected] [email protected] Submitted: Feb 25, 2014; Accepted: Apr 29, 2014; Published: May 13, 2014 Mathematics Subject Classifications: 05E30, 05C50, 05C70 Abstract A graph G of even order v is called t-extendable if it contains a perfect matching, t < v=2 and any matching of t edges is contained in some perfect matching. The extendability of G is the maximum t such that G is t-extendable. In this paper, we study the extendability properties of strongly regular graphs. We improve previous results and classify all strongly regular graphs that are not 3-extendable. We also show that strongly regular graphs of valency k > 3 with λ > 1 are bk=3c-extendable k+1 (when µ 6 k=2) and d 4 e-extendable (when µ > k=2), where λ is the number of common neighbors of any two adjacent vertices and µ is the number of common neighbors of any two non-adjacent vertices. Our results are close to being best pos- sible as there are strongly regular graphs of valency k that are not dk=2e-extendable. We show that the extendability of many strongly regular graphs of valency k is at least dk=2e − 1 and we conjecture that this is true for all primitive strongly regular graphs. We obtain similar results for strongly regular graphs of odd order.