Treewidth, Hadwiger Number, and Induced Minors

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Campbell, Rutger, Davies, James, Distel, Marc, Frederickson, Bryce, Gollin, J. Pascal, Hendrey, Kevin, Hickingbotham, Robert, Wiederrecht, Sebastian, Wood, David R., Yepremyan, Liana
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914988594036736
author Campbell, Rutger
Davies, James
Distel, Marc
Frederickson, Bryce
Gollin, J. Pascal
Hendrey, Kevin
Hickingbotham, Robert
Wiederrecht, Sebastian
Wood, David R.
Yepremyan, Liana
author_facet Campbell, Rutger
Davies, James
Distel, Marc
Frederickson, Bryce
Gollin, J. Pascal
Hendrey, Kevin
Hickingbotham, Robert
Wiederrecht, Sebastian
Wood, David R.
Yepremyan, Liana
contents Treewidth and Hadwiger number are two of the most important parameters in structural graph theory. This paper studies graph classes in which large treewidth implies the existence of a large complete graph minor. To formalise this, we say that a graph class $\mathcal{G}$ is (tw,had)-bounded if there is a function $f$ (called the (tw,had)-bounding function) such that tw$(G)$ $\leq$ $f$(had$(G)$) for every graph $G \in \mathcal{G}$. We characterise (tw,had)-bounded graph classes as those that exclude some planar graph as an induced minor, and use this characterisation to show that every proper vertex-minor-closed class is (tw,had)-bounded. Furthermore, we demonstrate that any (tw,had)-bounded graph class has a (tw,had)-bounding function in O(had$(G)^9$polylog(had$(G)$)). Our bound comes from the bound for the Grid Minor Theorem given by Chuzhoy and Tan, and any quantitative improvement to their result will lead directly to an improvement to our result. More strongly, we conjecture that every (tw,had)-bounded graph class has a linear (tw,had)-bounding function. In support of this conjecture, we show that it holds for the class of outer-string graphs, and for a natural generalisation of outer-string graphs: intersection graphs of strings rooted at the boundary of a fixed surface. We also verify our conjecture for low-rank perturbations of circle graphs, which is an important step towards verifying it for all proper vertex-minor-closed classes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_19295
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Treewidth, Hadwiger Number, and Induced Minors
Campbell, Rutger
Davies, James
Distel, Marc
Frederickson, Bryce
Gollin, J. Pascal
Hendrey, Kevin
Hickingbotham, Robert
Wiederrecht, Sebastian
Wood, David R.
Yepremyan, Liana
Combinatorics
05C99
G.2.2
Treewidth and Hadwiger number are two of the most important parameters in structural graph theory. This paper studies graph classes in which large treewidth implies the existence of a large complete graph minor. To formalise this, we say that a graph class $\mathcal{G}$ is (tw,had)-bounded if there is a function $f$ (called the (tw,had)-bounding function) such that tw$(G)$ $\leq$ $f$(had$(G)$) for every graph $G \in \mathcal{G}$. We characterise (tw,had)-bounded graph classes as those that exclude some planar graph as an induced minor, and use this characterisation to show that every proper vertex-minor-closed class is (tw,had)-bounded. Furthermore, we demonstrate that any (tw,had)-bounded graph class has a (tw,had)-bounding function in O(had$(G)^9$polylog(had$(G)$)). Our bound comes from the bound for the Grid Minor Theorem given by Chuzhoy and Tan, and any quantitative improvement to their result will lead directly to an improvement to our result. More strongly, we conjecture that every (tw,had)-bounded graph class has a linear (tw,had)-bounding function. In support of this conjecture, we show that it holds for the class of outer-string graphs, and for a natural generalisation of outer-string graphs: intersection graphs of strings rooted at the boundary of a fixed surface. We also verify our conjecture for low-rank perturbations of circle graphs, which is an important step towards verifying it for all proper vertex-minor-closed classes.
title Treewidth, Hadwiger Number, and Induced Minors
topic Combinatorics
05C99
G.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.19295