A min–max theorem for plane bipartite graphs

We consider a partitioning problem, defined for bipartite and 2-connected plane graphs, where each node should be covered exactly once by either an edge or by a cycle surrounding a face. The objective is to maximize the number of face boundaries in the partition. This problem arises in mathematical chemistry in the computation of the Clar number of hexagonal systems. In this paper we establish that a certain minimum weight covering problem of faces by cuts is a strong dual of the partitioning problem. Our proof relies on network flow and linear programming duality arguments, and settles a conjecture formulated by Hansen and Zheng in the context of hexagonal systems [P. Hansen, M. Zheng, Upper Bounds for the Clar Number of Benzenoid Hydrocarbons, Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transactions 88 (1992) 1621–1625].