The Hopcroft-Karp Algorithm is an efficient method used to find the maximum matching in a bipartite graph. A bipartite graph consists of two distinct sets of vertices, where edges only connect vertices from different sets. The algorithm operates in two main phases: it first finds augmenting paths using a breadth-first search, and then it improves the matching by augmenting these paths. This algorithm has a time complexity of O(E \sqrtV), where E is the number of edges and V is the number of vertices. It is widely used in various applications, including job assignments and network flow problems, making it a fundamental tool in graph theory and combinatorial optimization.