“…The matching preclusion number of a graph G, denoted by mp(G), is the size of a smallest matching preclusion set of G. Any such optimal set is called an optimal matching preclusion set. The concept of matching preclusion was introduced by Birgham et al (Birgham, Harry, Biolin, & Yellen, 2005) and further studied in (Cheng, Lesniak, Lipman, & Lipták, 2008;Cheng, Lesniak, Lipman, Lipták, 2007;Wang, Mao, Cheng, & Zou, 2019;Wang, Melekian, Cheng, & Mao, 2019), with special attention to interconnection networks. For graphs with an even number of vertices, an obvious matching preclusion set is the set of edges incident with a single vertex; such a set is called a trivial matching preclusion set.…”