Dichotomies for Maximum Matching Cut: $H$-Freeness, Bounded Diameter, Bounded Radius

The (Perfect) Matching Cut problem is to decide if a graph $G$ has a (perfect) matching cut, i.e., a (perfect) matching that is also an edge cut of $G$. Both Matching Cut and Perfect Matching Cut are known to be NP-complete. A perfect matching cut is also a matching cut with maximum number of edges. To increase our understanding of the relationship between the two problems, we introduce the Maximum Matching Cut problem. This problem is to determine a largest matching cut in a graph. We generalize and unify known polynomial-time algorithms for Matching Cut and Perfect Matching Cut restricted to graphs of diameter at most $2$ and to $(P_6+sP_2)$-free graphs. We also show that the complexity of Maximum Matching Cut differs from the complexities of Matching Cut and Perfect Matching Cut by proving NP-hardness of Maximum Matching Cut for $2P_3$-free quadrangulated graphs of diameter $3$ and radius $2$ and for subcubic line graphs of triangle-free graphs. In this way, we obtain full dichotomies of Maximum Matching Cut for graphs of bounded diameter, bounded radius and $H$-free graphs. Finally, we apply our techniques to get a dichotomy for the Maximum Disconnected Perfect Matching problem for $H$-free graphs. A disconnected perfect matching of a graph $G$ is a perfect matching that contains a matching cut of $G$. The Maximum Disconnected Perfect Matching problem asks to determine for a connected graph $G$, a disconnected perfect matching with a largest matching cut over all disconnected perfect matchings of $G$. Our dichotomy result implies that the original decision problem Disconnected Perfect Matching is polynomial-time solvable for $(P_6+sP_2)$-free graphs for every $s\geq 0$, which resolves an open problem of Bouquet and Picouleau (arXiv, 2020).