Hadwiger's conjecture and topological bounds

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1. Verfasser: Steiner, Raphael
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Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Steiner, Raphael
author_facet Steiner, Raphael
contents The Odd Hadwiger's conjecture, formulated by Gerards and Seymour in 1995, is a substantial strengthening of Hadwiger's famous coloring conjecture from 1943. We investigate whether the hierarchy of topological lower bounds on the chromatic number, introduced by Matoušek and Ziegler (2003) and refined recently by Daneshpajouh and Meunier (2023), forms a potential avenue to a disproof of Hadwiger's conjecture or its odd-minor variant. In this direction, we prove that, in a very general sense, every graph $G$ that admits a topological lower bound of $t$ on its chromatic number, contains $K_{\lfloor t/2\rfloor +1}$ as an odd-minor. This solves a problem posed by Simonyi and Zsbán [European Journal of Combinatorics, 31(8), 2110--2119 (2010)]. We also prove that if for a graph $G$ the Dol'nikov-Kříž lower bound on the chromatic number (one of the lower bounds in the aforementioned hierarchy) attains a value of at least $t$, then $G$ contains $K_t$ as a minor. Finally, extending results by Simonyi and Zsbán, we show that the Odd Hadwiger's conjecture holds for Schrijver and Kneser graphs for any choice of the parameters. The latter are canonical examples of graphs for which topological lower bounds on the chromatic number are tight.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_17130
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hadwiger's conjecture and topological bounds
Steiner, Raphael
Combinatorics
05C15, 05C83, 05C10
The Odd Hadwiger's conjecture, formulated by Gerards and Seymour in 1995, is a substantial strengthening of Hadwiger's famous coloring conjecture from 1943. We investigate whether the hierarchy of topological lower bounds on the chromatic number, introduced by Matoušek and Ziegler (2003) and refined recently by Daneshpajouh and Meunier (2023), forms a potential avenue to a disproof of Hadwiger's conjecture or its odd-minor variant. In this direction, we prove that, in a very general sense, every graph $G$ that admits a topological lower bound of $t$ on its chromatic number, contains $K_{\lfloor t/2\rfloor +1}$ as an odd-minor. This solves a problem posed by Simonyi and Zsbán [European Journal of Combinatorics, 31(8), 2110--2119 (2010)]. We also prove that if for a graph $G$ the Dol'nikov-Kříž lower bound on the chromatic number (one of the lower bounds in the aforementioned hierarchy) attains a value of at least $t$, then $G$ contains $K_t$ as a minor. Finally, extending results by Simonyi and Zsbán, we show that the Odd Hadwiger's conjecture holds for Schrijver and Kneser graphs for any choice of the parameters. The latter are canonical examples of graphs for which topological lower bounds on the chromatic number are tight.
title Hadwiger's conjecture and topological bounds
topic Combinatorics
05C15, 05C83, 05C10
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.17130