A graph G is perfect if for every induced subgraph H, the chromatic number of H equals the size of the largest complete subgraph of H, and G is Berge if no induced subgraph of G is an odd cycle of length at least 5 or the complement of one. The “strong perfect graph conjecture” (Berge, 1961) asserts that a graph is perfect if and only if it is Berge. A stronger conjecture was made recently by C...

Our proof (with Robertson and Thomas) of the strong perfect graph conjecture ran to 179 pages of dense matter; and the most impenetrable part was the final 55 pages, on what we called “wheel systems”. In this paper we give a replacement for those 55 pages, much easier and shorter, using “even pairs”. This is based on an approach of Maffray and Trotignon.

an r-module m is called epi-retractable if every submodule of mr is a homomorphic image of m. it is shown that if r is a right perfect ring, then every projective slightly compressible module mr is epi-retractable. if r is a noetherian ring, then every epi-retractable right r-module has direct sum of uniform submodules. if endomorphism ring of a module mr is von-neumann regular, then m is semi-...

A c-ary Perfect Factor is a set of uniformly long cycles whose elements are drawn from a set of size c, in which every possible v-tuple of elements occurs exactly once. In the binary case, i.e. where c = 2, these perfect factors have previously been studied by Etzion, [2], who showed that the obvious necessary conditions for their existence are in fact sufficient. This result has recently been ...

A perfect number is a positive integer n such that n equals the sum of all positive integer divisors of n that are less than n. That is, although n is a divisor of n, n is excluded from this sum. Thus 6 = 1 + 2 + 3 is perfect, but 12 6= 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 is not perfect. An ACL2 theory of perfect numbers is developed and used to prove, in ACL2(r), this bit of mathematical folklore: Even if there...

A binary poset code of codimension m (of cardinality 2n−m , where n is the code length) can correct maximum m errors. All possible poset metrics that allow codes of codimension m to be m-, (m − 1)-, or (m − 2)-perfect are described. Some general conditions on a poset which guarantee the nonexistence of perfect poset codes are derived; as examples, we prove the nonexistence of r-perfect poset co...

The complement of a graph G is denoted by G. χ(G) denotes the chromatic number and ω(G) the clique number of G. The cycles of odd length at least five are called odd holes and the complements of odd holes are called odd anti-holes. A graph G is called perfect if, for each induced subgraph G of G, χ(G) = ω(G). Classical examples of perfect graphs consist of bipartite graphs, chordal graphs and c...

The Strong Perfect Graph Conjecture (SPGC) was certainly one of the most challenging conjectures in graph theory. During more than four decades, numerous attempts were made to solve it, by combinatorial methods, by linear algebraic methods, or by polyhedral methods. The rst of these three approaches yielded the rst (and to date only) proof of the SPGC; the other two remain promising to consider...