On 2‐factors of a bipartite graph

In this article, we consider the following problem: Given a bipartite graph G and a positive integer k, when does G have a 2‐factor with exactly k components? We will prove that if G = (V₁, V₂, E) is a bipartite graph with |V₁| = |V₂| = n ≥ 2k + 1 and δ (G) ≥ ?n/2? + 1, then G contains a 2‐factor with exactly k components. We conjecture that if G = (V₁, V₂; E) is a bipartite graph such that |V₁| = |V₂| = n ≥ 2 and δ (G) ≥ ?n/2? + 1, then, for any bipartite graph H = (U₁, U₂; F) with |U₁| ≤ n, |U₂| ≤ n and Δ (H) ≤ 2, G contains a subgraph isomorphic to H. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 31: 101–106, 1999