Obstructions to within a few vertices or edges of acyclic

Finite obstruction sets for lower ideals in the minor order are guaranteed to exist by the Graph Minor Theorem. It has been known for several years that, in principle, obstruction sets can be mechanically computed for most natural lower ideals. In this paper, we describe a general-purpose method for finding obstructions by using a bounded treewidth (or pathwidth) search. We illustrate this approach by characterizing certain families of cycle-cover graphs based on the two well-known problems: $k$-{\sc Feedback Vertex Set} and $k$-{\sc Feedback Edge Set}. Our search is based on a number of algorithmic strategies by which large constants can be mitigated, including a randomized strategy for obtaining proofs of minimality.Comment: 16 page

From Frazier-Jawerth characterizations of Besov spaces to Wavelets and Decomposition spaces

This article describes how the ideas promoted by the fundamental papers published by M. Frazier and B. Jawerth in the eighties have influenced subsequent developments related to the theory of atomic decompositions and Banach frames for function spaces such as the modulation spaces and Besov-Triebel-Lizorkin spaces. Both of these classes of spaces arise as special cases of two different, general constructions of function spaces: coorbit spaces and decomposition spaces. Coorbit spaces are defined by imposing certain decay conditions on the so-called voice transform of the function/distribution under consideration. As a concrete example, one might think of the wavelet transform, leading to the theory of Besov-Triebel-Lizorkin spaces. Decomposition spaces, on the other hand, are defined using certain decompositions in the Fourier domain. For Besov-Triebel-Lizorkin spaces, one uses a dyadic decomposition, while a uniform decomposition yields modulation spaces. Only recently, the second author has established a fruitful connection between modern variants of wavelet theory with respect to general dilation groups (which can be treated in the context of coorbit theory) and a particular family of decomposition spaces. In this way, optimal inclusion results and invariance properties for a variety of smoothness spaces can be established. We will present an outline of these connections and comment on the basic results arising in this context

Definability Equals Recognizability for kk-Outerplanar Graphs

One of the most famous algorithmic meta-theorems states that every graph property that can be defined by a sentence in counting monadic second order logic (CMSOL) can be checked in linear time for graphs of bounded treewidth, which is known as Courcelle's Theorem. These algorithms are constructed as finite state tree automata, and hence every CMSOL-definable graph property is recognizable. Courcelle also conjectured that the converse holds, i.e. every recognizable graph property is definable in CMSOL for graphs of bounded treewidth. We prove this conjecture for $k$-outerplanar graphs, which are known to have treewidth at most $3k-1$.Comment: 40 pages, 8 figure

Linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs II. Vertex-minor obstructions

In the companion paper [Linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs I. A polynomial-time algorithm, Algorithmica 78(1):342--377, 2017], we presented a characterization of the linear rank-width of distance-hereditary graphs, from which we derived an algorithm to compute it in polynomial time. In this paper, we investigate structural properties of distance-hereditary graphs based on this characterization. First, we prove that for a fixed tree $T$, every distance-hereditary graph of sufficiently large linear rank-width contains a vertex-minor isomorphic to $T$. We extend this property to bigger graph classes, namely, classes of graphs whose prime induced subgraphs have bounded linear rank-width. Here, prime graphs are graphs containing no splits. We conjecture that for every tree $T$, every graph of sufficiently large linear rank-width contains a vertex-minor isomorphic to $T$. Our result implies that it is sufficient to prove this conjecture for prime graphs. For a class $\Phi$ of graphs closed under taking vertex-minors, a graph $G$ is called a vertex-minor obstruction for $\Phi$ if $G\notin \Phi$ but all of its proper vertex-minors are contained in $\Phi$. Secondly, we provide, for each $k\ge 2$, a set of distance-hereditary graphs that contains all distance-hereditary vertex-minor obstructions for graphs of linear rank-width at most $k$. Also, we give a simpler way to obtain the known vertex-minor obstructions for graphs of linear rank-width at most $1$.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures, 1 table, revised journal version. A preliminary version of Section 5 appeared in the proceedings of WG1

Sparse Matrix Decompositions and Graph Characterizations

The question of when zeros (i.e., sparsity) in a positive definite matrix $A$ are preserved in its Cholesky decomposition, and vice versa, was addressed by Paulsen et al. in the Journal of Functional Analysis (85, pp151-178). In particular, they prove that for the pattern of zeros in $A$ to be retained in the Cholesky decomposition of $A$, the pattern of zeros in $A$ has to necessarily correspond to a chordal (or decomposable) graph associated with a specific type of vertex ordering. This result therefore yields a characterization of chordal graphs in terms of sparse positive definite matrices. It has also proved to be extremely useful in probabilistic and statistical analysis of Markov random fields where zeros in positive definite correlation matrices are intimately related to the notion of stochastic independence. Now, consider a positive definite matrix $A$ and its Cholesky decomposition given by $A = LDL^T$, where $L$ is lower triangular with unit diagonal entries, and $D$ a diagonal matrix with positive entries. In this paper, we prove that a necessary and sufficient condition for zeros (i.e., sparsity) in a positive definite matrix $A$ to be preserved in its associated Cholesky matrix $L$, \, and in addition also preserved in the inverse of the Cholesky matrix $L^{-1}$, is that the pattern of zeros corresponds to a co-chordal or homogeneous graph associated with a specific type of vertex ordering. We proceed to provide a second characterization of this class of graphs in terms of determinants of submatrices that correspond to cliques in the graph. These results add to the growing body of literature in the field of sparse matrix decompositions, and also prove to be critical ingredients in the probabilistic analysis of an important class of Markov random fields

Different forms of metric characterizations of classes of Banach spaces

For each sequence X of finite-dimensional Banach spaces there exists a sequence H of finite connected nweighted graphs with maximum degree 3 such that the following conditions on a Banach space Y are equivalent: (1) Y admits uniformly isomorphic embeddings of elements of the sequence X. (2) Y admits uniformly bilipschitz embeddings of elements of the sequence H.Comment: Accepted for publication in Houston Journal of Mathematic

Characterizing Sparse Graphs by Map Decompositions

A map is a graph that admits an orientation of its edges so that each vertex has out-degree exactly 1. We characterize graphs which admit a decomposition into k edge-disjoint maps after: (1) the addition of any ℓ edges; (2) the addition of some ℓ edges. These graphs are identified with classes of sparse graphs; the results are also given in matroidal terms