A Property About Minimum Edge- and Minimum Clique-Cover of a Graph

 Let G be a graph with n vertices, and denote as γ(G) (as θ(G)) the cardinality of a minimum edge cover (of a minimum clique cover) of G. Let E (let C) be the edge-vertex (the clique-vertex) incidence matrix of G; write then P(E)={x∈ℜ ⁿ :Ex≤1,x≥0}, P(C)={x∈ℜ ⁿ :Cx≤1,x≥0}, α _E (G)=max{1 ^T x subject to x∈P(E)}, and α _C (G)= max{1 ^T x subject to x∈P(C)}. In this paper we prove that if α _E (G)=α _C (G), then γ(G)=θ(G). Received: May 20, 1998?Final version received: April 12, 1999