Bounding the Size of Equimatchable Graphs of Fixed Genus

A graph G is said to be equimatchable if every matching in G extends to (i.e., is a subset of) a maximum matching in G. In an earlier paper with Saito, the authors showed that there are only a finite number of 3-connected equimatchable planar graphs. In the present paper, this result is extended by showing that in a surface of any fixed genus (orientable or non-orientable), there are only a finite number of 3-connected equimatchable graphs having a minimal embedding of representativity at least three. (In fact, if the graphs considered are non-bipartite, the representativity three hypothesis may be dropped.) The proof makes use of the Gallai-Edmonds decomposition theorem for matchings.