Surfaces, Tree-Width, Clique-Minors, and Partitions

In 1971, Chartrand, Geller, and Hedetniemi conjectured that the edge set of a planar graph may be partitioned into two subsets, each of which induces an outerplanar graph. Some partial results towards this conjecture are presented. One such result, in which a planar graph may be thus edge partitioned into two series-parallel graphs, has nice generalizations for graphs embedded onto an arbitrary surface and graphs with no large clique-minor. Several open questions are raised. © 2000 Academic Press

Graph Theory

Graph theory is a rapidly developing area of mathematics. Recent years have seen the development of deep theories, and the increasing importance of methods from other parts of mathematics. The workshop on Graph Theory brought together together a broad range of researchers to discuss some of the major new developments. There were three central themes, each of which has seen striking recent progress: the structure of graphs with forbidden subgraphs; graph minor theory; and applications of the entropy compression method. The workshop featured major talks on current work in these areas, as well as presentations of recent breakthroughs and connections to other areas. There was a particularly exciting selection of longer talks, including presentations on the structure of graphs with forbidden induced subgraphs, embedding simply connected 2-complexes in 3-space, and an announcement of the solution of the well-known Oberwolfach Problem

tt-sails and sparse hereditary classes of unbounded tree-width

It has long been known that the following basic objects are obstructions to bounded tree-width: for arbitrarily large $t$, $(1)$ the complete graph $K_t$, $(2)$ the complete bipartite graph $K_{t,t}$, $(3)$ a subdivision of the $(t \times t)$-wall and $(4)$ the line graph of a subdivision of the $(t \times t)$-wall. We now add a further \emph{boundary object} to this list, a subdivision of a \emph{$t$-sail}. These results have been obtained by studying sparse hereditary \emph{path-star} graph classes, each of which consists of the finite induced subgraphs of a single infinite graph whose edges can be decomposed into a path (or forest of paths) with a forest of stars, characterised by an infinite word over a possibly infinite alphabet. We show that a path-star class whose infinite graph has an unbounded number of stars, each of which connects an unbounded number of times to the path, has unbounded tree-width. In addition, we show that such a class is not a subclass of circle graphs, a hereditary class whose unavoidable induced subgraphs with large treewidth were identified by Hickingbotham, Illingworth, Mohar and Wood \cite{hickingbotham:treewidth_circlegraphs:}. We identify a collection of \emph{nested} words with a recursive structure that exhibit interesting characteristics when used to define a path-star graph class. These graph classes do not contain any of the four basic obstructions but instead contain graphs that have large tree-width if and only if they contain arbitrarily large subdivisions of a $t$-sail. Furthermore, like classes of bounded degree or classes excluding a fixed minor, these sparse graph classes do not contain a minimal class of unbounded tree-width

Planar graph coloring avoiding monochromatic subgraphs: trees and paths make things difficult

We consider the problem of coloring a planar graph with the minimum number of colors such that each color class avoids one or more forbidden graphs as subgraphs. We perform a detailed study of the computational complexity of this problem

Testing Hamiltonicity (And Other Problems) in Minor-Free Graphs

In this paper we provide sub-linear algorithms for several fundamental problems in the setting in which the input graph excludes a fixed minor, i.e., is a minor-free graph. In particular, we provide the following algorithms for minor-free unbounded degree graphs. 1) A tester for Hamiltonicity with two-sided error with poly(1/?)-query complexity, where ? is the proximity parameter. 2) A local algorithm, as defined by Rubinfeld et al. (ICS 2011), for constructing a spanning subgraph with almost minimum weight, specifically, at most a factor (1+?) of the optimum, with poly(1/?)-query complexity. Both our algorithms use partition oracles, a tool introduced by Hassidim et al. (FOCS 2009), which are oracles that provide access to a partition of the graph such that the number of cut-edges is small and each part of the partition is small. The polynomial dependence in 1/? of our algorithms is achieved by combining the recent poly(d/?)-query partition oracle of Kumar-Seshadhri-Stolman (ECCC 2021) for minor-free graphs with degree bounded by d. For bounded degree minor-free graphs we introduce the notion of covering partition oracles which is a relaxed version of partition oracles and design a poly(d/?)-time covering partition oracle for this family of graphs. Using our covering partition oracle we provide the same results as above (except that the tester for Hamiltonicity has one-sided error) for minor-free bounded degree graphs, as well as showing that any property which is monotone and additive (e.g. bipartiteness) can be tested in minor-free graphs by making poly(d/?)-queries. The benefit of using the covering partition oracle rather than the partition oracle in our algorithms is its simplicity and an improved polynomial dependence in 1/? in the obtained query complexity

Planar graph coloring avoiding monochromatic subgraphs : trees and paths make it difficult

We consider the problem of coloring a planar graph with the minimum number of colors so that each color class avoids one or more forbidden graphs as subgraphs. We perform a detailed study of the computational complexity of this problem. We present a complete picture for the case with a single forbidden connected (induced or noninduced) subgraph. The 2-coloring problem is NP-hard if the forbidden subgraph is a tree with at least two edges, and it is polynomially solvable in all other cases. The 3-coloring problem is NP-hard if the forbidden subgraph is a path with at least one edge, and it is polynomially solvable in all other cases. We also derive results for several forbidden sets of cycles. In particular, we prove that it is NP-complete to decide if a planar graph can be 2-colored so that no cycle of length at most 5 is monochromatic

Efficient Distributed Decomposition and Routing Algorithms in Minor-Free Networks and Their Applications

In the LOCAL model, low-diameter decomposition is a useful tool in designing algorithms, as it allows us to shift from the general graph setting to the low-diameter graph setting, where brute-force information gathering can be done efficiently. Recently, Chang and Su [PODC 2022] showed that any high-conductance network excluding a fixed minor contains a high-degree vertex, so the entire graph topology can be gathered to one vertex efficiently in the CONGEST model using expander routing. Therefore, in networks excluding a fixed minor, many problems that can be solved efficiently in LOCAL via low-diameter decomposition can also be solved efficiently in CONGEST via expander decomposition. In this work, we show improved decomposition and routing algorithms for networks excluding a fixed minor in the CONGEST model. Our algorithms cost $\text{poly}(\log n, 1/\epsilon)$ rounds deterministically. For bounded-degree graphs, our algorithms finish in $O(\epsilon^{-1}\log n) + \epsilon^{-O(1)}$ rounds. Our algorithms have a wide range of applications, including the following results in CONGEST. 1. A $(1-\epsilon)$-approximate maximum independent set in a network excluding a fixed minor can be computed deterministically in $O(\epsilon^{-1}\log^\ast n) + \epsilon^{-O(1)}$ rounds, nearly matching the $\Omega(\epsilon^{-1}\log^\ast n)$ lower bound of Lenzen and Wattenhofer [DISC 2008]. 2. Property testing of any additive minor-closed property can be done deterministically in $O(\log n)$ rounds if $\epsilon$ is a constant or $O(\epsilon^{-1}\log n) + \epsilon^{-O(1)}$ rounds if the maximum degree $\Delta$ is a constant, nearly matching the $\Omega(\epsilon^{-1}\log n)$ lower bound of Levi, Medina, and Ron [PODC 2018].Comment: To appear in PODC 202