We show that r-regular, s-uniform hypergraphs contain a perfect matching with high probability (whp), provided The Proof is based on the application of a technique of Robinson and Wormald [7, 8]. The space of hypergraphs is partitioned into subsets according to the number of small cycles in the hypergraph. The difference in the expected number of perfect matchings between these subsets explains most of the variance of the number of perfect matchings in the space of hypergraphs, and is sufficient to prove existence (whp), using the Chebychev Inequality.

A harmonious colouring of a simple graph G is a proper vertex colouring such that each pair of colours appears together on at most one edge. The harmonious chromatic number h(G) is the least number of colours in such a colouring. Let d be a fixed positive integer. We show that there is a natural number N(d) such that if T is any tree with m ≥ N(d) edges and maximum degree at most d, then the harmonious chromatic number h(T) is k or k + 1, where k is the least positive integer such that . We also give a polynomial time algorithm for determining the harmonious chromatic number of a tree with maximum degree at most d.

Let ex(n, K3,3) denote the maximum number of edges of a K3,3-free graph on n vertices. Improving earlier results of Kővári, T. Sós and Turán on Zarankiewicz' problem, we obtain that Brown's example for a maximal K3,3-free graph is asymptotically optimal. Hence .

We continue the study of the following general problem on the vertex colourings of graphs. Suppose that some vertices of a graph G are assigned to some colours. Can this ‘precolouring’ be extended to a proper colouring of G with at most k colours (for some given k)? Here we investigate the complexity status of precolouring extendibility on some classes of perfect graphs, giving good characterizations (necessary and sufficient conditions) that lead to algorithms with linear or polynomial running time. It is also shown how a larger subclass of perfect graphs can be derived from graphs containing no induced path on four vertices.

Let P10\e be the graph obtained by deleting an edge from the Petersen graph. We give a decomposition theorem for cubic graphs with no minor isomorphic to P10\e. The decomposition is used to show that graphs in this class are 3-edge-colourable. We also consider an application to a conjecture due to Grötzsch which states that a planar graph is 3-edge-colourable if and only if it is fractionally 3-edge-colourable.

This note contains a refinement of our paper [8], leading to an alternative proof of a conjecture of Mader and of Erdős and Hajnal recently proved by Bollobás and Thomason.

Recently, Galvin [7] proved that every k-edge-colourable bipartite multigraph is k-edge-choosable. In particular, for a bipartite multigraph G, . Here we give a brief self-contained proof of this result.