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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bourneuf, Romain, Joret, Gwenaël, Micek, Piotr, Milanič, Martin, Pilipczuk, Michał
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.24270
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Table of Contents:
  • We show that every connected graph $G$ has a tree decomposition indexed by a tree $T$ such that $T$ is a subgraph of $G$ and the width of the tree decomposition is bounded from above by a function of the pathwidth of $G$. This answers a question of Blanco, Cook, Hatzel, Hilaire, Illingworth, and McCarty (2024), who proved that it is not possible to have such a tree decomposition whose width is bounded by a function of the treewidth of $G$. The proof relies on Simon's Factorization Theorem for finite semigroups, a tool that has already been applied successfully in various areas of graph theory and combinatorics in recent years. Our application is particularly simple and can serve as a good introduction to this technique.