The Hopcroft-Karp algorithm is an efficient method for finding the maximum matching in a bipartite graph. It operates in two main phases: breadth-first search (BFS) and depth-first search (DFS). In the BFS phase, the algorithm finds the shortest augmenting paths, which are paths that can increase the size of the current matching. Then, in the DFS phase, it attempts to augment the matching along these paths. The algorithm has a time complexity of , where is the number of edges and is the number of vertices, making it significantly faster than other matching algorithms for large graphs. This efficiency is particularly useful in applications such as job assignments, network flows, and resource allocation problems.
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