Maximum Skew-Symmetric Flows

We introduce the maximum skew-symmetric flow problem which generalizes flow and matching problems. We develop a theory of skew-symmetric flows that is parallel to the classical flow theory. We use the newly developed theory to extend, in a natural way, the blocking flow method of Dinitz to the skew-symmetric flow case. In the special case of the skew-symmetric flow problem that corresponds to cardinality matching, our algorithm is simpler and more efficient than the corresponding matching algorithm.

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