Let $A$ and $B$ be two point sets in the plane of sizes $r$ and $n$ respectively (assume $r leq n$), and let $k$ be a parameter. A matching between $A$ and $B$ is a family of pairs in $A times B$ so that any point of $A cup B$ appears in at most one pair. Given two positive integers $p$ and $q$, we define the cost of matching $M$ to be $c(M) = sum_{(a, b) in M}|{a-b}|_p^q$ where $|{cdot}|_p$ is the $L_p$-norm. The geometric partial matching problem asks to find the minimum-cost size-$k$ matching between $A$ and $B$. We present efficient algorithms for geometric partial matching problem that work for any powers of $L_p$-norm matching objective: An exact algorithm that runs in $O((n + k^2) {mathop{mathrm{polylog}}} n)$ time, and a $(1 + varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm that runs in $O((n + ksqrt{k}) {mathop{mathrm{polylog}}} n cdot logvarepsilon^{-1})$ time. Both algorithms are based on the primal-dual flow augmentation scheme; the main improvements involve using dynamic data structures to achieve efficient flow augmentations. With similar techniques, we give an exact algorithm for the planar transportation problem running in $O(min{n^2, rn^{3/2}} {mathop{mathrm{polylog}}} n)$ time.
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