A note on forbidding clique immersions

Robertson and Seymour proved that the relation of graph immersion is well-quasi-ordered for finite graphs. Their proof uses the results of graph minors theory. Surprisingly, there is a very short proof of the corresponding rough structure theorem for graphs without $K_t$-immersions; it is based on the Gomory-Hu theorem. The same proof also works to establish a rough structure theorem for Eulerian digraphs without $\vec{K}_t$-immersions, where $\vec{K}_t$ denotes the bidirected complete digraph of order $t$

The structure of graphs not admitting a fixed immersion

We present an easy structure theorem for graphs which do not admit an immersion of the complete graph. The theorem motivates the definition of a variation of tree decompositions based on edge cuts instead of vertex cuts which we call tree-cut decompositions. We give a definition for the width of tree-cut decompositions, and using this definition along with the structure theorem for excluded clique immersions, we prove that every graph either has bounded tree-cut width or admits an immersion of a large wall

The structure of graphs not admitting a fixed immersion

We present an easy structure theorem for graphs which do not admit an immersion of the complete graph. The theorem motivates the definition of a variation of tree decompositions based on edge cuts instead of vertex cuts which we call tree-cut decompositions. We give a definition for the width of tree-cut decompositions, and using this definition along with the structure theorem for excluded clique immersions, we prove that every graph either has bounded tree-cut width or admits an immersion of a large wall

Immersion of complete digraphs in Eulerian digraphs

A digraph $G$ \emph{immerses} a digraph $H$ if there is an injection $f : V(H) \to V(G)$ and a collection of pairwise edge-disjoint directed paths $P_{uv}$, for $uv \in E(H)$, such that $P_{uv}$ starts at $u$ and ends at $v$. We prove that every Eulerian digraph with minimum out-degree $t$ immerses a complete digraph on $\Omega(t)$ vertices, thus answering a question of DeVos, Mcdonald, Mohar, and Scheide.Comment: 17 pages; fixed typo

Unavoidable Immersions and Intertwines of Graphs

The topological minor and the minor relations are well-studied binary relations on the class of graphs. A natural weakening of the topological minor relation is an immersion. An immersion of a graph H into a graph G is a map that injects the vertex set of H into the vertex set of G such that edges between vertices of H are represented by pairwise-edge-disjoint paths of G. In this dissertation, we present two results: the first giving a set of unavoidable immersions of large 3-edge-connected graphs and the second on immersion intertwines of infinite graphs. These results, along with the methods used to prove them, are analogues of results on the graph minor relation. A conjecture for the unavoidable immersions of large 3-edge-connected graphs is also stated with a partial proof