Removable Edges in Claw-Free Bricks

Abstract

An edge e in a matching covered graph G is removable if \(G-e\) is matching covered. Removable edges were introduced by Lovász and Plummer in connection with ear decompositions of matching covered graphs. A brick is a non-bipartite matching covered graph without non-trivial tight cuts. The importance of bricks stems from the fact that they are building blocks of matching covered graphs. Lovász proved that every brick other than \(K_4\) and \(\overline{C_6}\) has a removable edge. It is known that every 3-connected claw-free graph with even number of vertices is a brick. By characterizing the structure of adjacent non-removable edges, we show that every claw-free brick G with more than 6 vertices has at least 5|V(G)|/8 removable edges.