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Main Authors: Humeau, Samuel, Kanté, Mamadou Moustapha, Mock, Daniel, Picavet, Timothé, Vigny, Alexandre
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10230
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author Humeau, Samuel
Kanté, Mamadou Moustapha
Mock, Daniel
Picavet, Timothé
Vigny, Alexandre
author_facet Humeau, Samuel
Kanté, Mamadou Moustapha
Mock, Daniel
Picavet, Timothé
Vigny, Alexandre
contents In property testing, a tester makes queries to (an oracle for) a graph and, on a graph having or being far from having a property P, it decides with high probability whether the graph satisfies P or not. Often, testers are restricted to a constant number of queries. While the graph properties for which there exists such a tester are somewhat well characterized in the dense graph model, it is not the case for sparse graphs. In this area, Czumaj and Sohler (FOCS'19) proved that H-freeness (i.e. the property of excluding the graph H as a subgraph) can be tested with constant queries on planar graphs as well as on graph classes excluding a minor. Using results from the sparsity toolkit, we propose a simpler alternative to the proof of Czumaj and Sohler, for a statement generalized to the broader notion of bounded expansion. That is, we prove that for any class C with bounded expansion and any graph H, testing H-freeness can be done with constant query complexity on any graph G in C, where the constant depends on H and C, but is independent of G. While classes excluding a minor are prime examples of classes with bounded expansion, so are, for example, cubic graphs, graph classes with bounded maximum degree, graphs of bounded book thickness, or random graphs of bounded average degree.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_10230
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Testing H-freeness on sparse graphs, the case of bounded expansion
Humeau, Samuel
Kanté, Mamadou Moustapha
Mock, Daniel
Picavet, Timothé
Vigny, Alexandre
Data Structures and Algorithms
Combinatorics
In property testing, a tester makes queries to (an oracle for) a graph and, on a graph having or being far from having a property P, it decides with high probability whether the graph satisfies P or not. Often, testers are restricted to a constant number of queries. While the graph properties for which there exists such a tester are somewhat well characterized in the dense graph model, it is not the case for sparse graphs. In this area, Czumaj and Sohler (FOCS'19) proved that H-freeness (i.e. the property of excluding the graph H as a subgraph) can be tested with constant queries on planar graphs as well as on graph classes excluding a minor. Using results from the sparsity toolkit, we propose a simpler alternative to the proof of Czumaj and Sohler, for a statement generalized to the broader notion of bounded expansion. That is, we prove that for any class C with bounded expansion and any graph H, testing H-freeness can be done with constant query complexity on any graph G in C, where the constant depends on H and C, but is independent of G. While classes excluding a minor are prime examples of classes with bounded expansion, so are, for example, cubic graphs, graph classes with bounded maximum degree, graphs of bounded book thickness, or random graphs of bounded average degree.
title Testing H-freeness on sparse graphs, the case of bounded expansion
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10230