Verifying Hadwiger's Conjecture for Examples of Graphs with $α(G) = 2$

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Costa, Jofre, Luu, Eric, Wood, David R., Yip, Jung Hon
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Costa, Jofre
Luu, Eric
Wood, David R.
Yip, Jung Hon
author_facet Costa, Jofre
Luu, Eric
Wood, David R.
Yip, Jung Hon
contents Hadwiger's Conjecture states that every graph with chromatic number $k$ contains a complete graph on $k$ vertices as a minor. This conjecture is a tremendous strengthening of the Four-Colour Theorem and is regarded as one of the most important open problems in graph theory. The case of Hadwiger's Conjecture for graphs with $α(G) = 2$ has garnered much attention. Seymour writes: ``My own belief is, if Hadwiger's Conjecture is true for graphs with stability number two then it is probably true in general, so it would be very nice to decide this case.'' This paper presents several tools useful for proving that a graph $G$ with $α(G) = 2$ satisfies Hadwiger's Conjecture. In doing so, we survey and generalise several classical results on the $α(G) = 2$ case of Hadwiger's Conjecture. Further, we apply these tools to prove variants of Hadwiger's Conjecture for several noteworthy classes of graphs with $α(G) = 2$. In particular, we prove Hadwiger's Conjecture for inflations of the complements of the following graphs: graphs with girth at least $5$, triangle-free Kneser graphs, and the Clebsch, Mesner, and Gewirtz graphs. This paper also highlights classes of graphs with $α(G) = 2$ where it is unknown if Hadwiger's Conjecture holds.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_17114
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Verifying Hadwiger's Conjecture for Examples of Graphs with $α(G) = 2$
Costa, Jofre
Luu, Eric
Wood, David R.
Yip, Jung Hon
Combinatorics
05C83 (Primary), 05C15, 05C35
Hadwiger's Conjecture states that every graph with chromatic number $k$ contains a complete graph on $k$ vertices as a minor. This conjecture is a tremendous strengthening of the Four-Colour Theorem and is regarded as one of the most important open problems in graph theory. The case of Hadwiger's Conjecture for graphs with $α(G) = 2$ has garnered much attention. Seymour writes: ``My own belief is, if Hadwiger's Conjecture is true for graphs with stability number two then it is probably true in general, so it would be very nice to decide this case.'' This paper presents several tools useful for proving that a graph $G$ with $α(G) = 2$ satisfies Hadwiger's Conjecture. In doing so, we survey and generalise several classical results on the $α(G) = 2$ case of Hadwiger's Conjecture. Further, we apply these tools to prove variants of Hadwiger's Conjecture for several noteworthy classes of graphs with $α(G) = 2$. In particular, we prove Hadwiger's Conjecture for inflations of the complements of the following graphs: graphs with girth at least $5$, triangle-free Kneser graphs, and the Clebsch, Mesner, and Gewirtz graphs. This paper also highlights classes of graphs with $α(G) = 2$ where it is unknown if Hadwiger's Conjecture holds.
title Verifying Hadwiger's Conjecture for Examples of Graphs with $α(G) = 2$
topic Combinatorics
05C83 (Primary), 05C15, 05C35
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17114