2,520 research outputs found
Average degree conditions forcing a minor
Mader first proved that high average degree forces a given graph as a minor.
Often motivated by Hadwiger's Conjecture, much research has focused on the
average degree required to force a complete graph as a minor. Subsequently,
various authors have consider the average degree required to force an arbitrary
graph as a minor. Here, we strengthen (under certain conditions) a recent
result by Reed and Wood, giving better bounds on the average degree required to
force an -minor when is a sparse graph with many high degree vertices.
This solves an open problem of Reed and Wood, and also generalises (to within a
constant factor) known results when is an unbalanced complete bipartite
graph
Forcing a sparse minor
This paper addresses the following question for a given graph : what is
the minimum number such that every graph with average degree at least
contains as a minor? Due to connections with Hadwiger's Conjecture,
this question has been studied in depth when is a complete graph. Kostochka
and Thomason independently proved that . More generally,
Myers and Thomason determined when has a super-linear number of
edges. We focus on the case when has a linear number of edges. Our main
result, which complements the result of Myers and Thomason, states that if
has vertices and average degree at least some absolute constant, then
. Furthermore, motivated by the case when
has small average degree, we prove that if has vertices and edges,
then (where the coefficient of 1 in the term is best
possible)
Defective and Clustered Graph Colouring
Consider the following two ways to colour the vertices of a graph where the
requirement that adjacent vertices get distinct colours is relaxed. A colouring
has "defect" if each monochromatic component has maximum degree at most
. A colouring has "clustering" if each monochromatic component has at
most vertices. This paper surveys research on these types of colourings,
where the first priority is to minimise the number of colours, with small
defect or small clustering as a secondary goal. List colouring variants are
also considered. The following graph classes are studied: outerplanar graphs,
planar graphs, graphs embeddable in surfaces, graphs with given maximum degree,
graphs with given maximum average degree, graphs excluding a given subgraph,
graphs with linear crossing number, linklessly or knotlessly embeddable graphs,
graphs with given Colin de Verdi\`ere parameter, graphs with given
circumference, graphs excluding a fixed graph as an immersion, graphs with
given thickness, graphs with given stack- or queue-number, graphs excluding
as a minor, graphs excluding as a minor, and graphs excluding
an arbitrary graph as a minor. Several open problems are discussed.Comment: This is a preliminary version of a dynamic survey to be published in
the Electronic Journal of Combinatoric
Grad and classes with bounded expansion I. decompositions
We introduce classes of graphs with bounded expansion as a generalization of
both proper minor closed classes and degree bounded classes. Such classes are
based on a new invariant, the greatest reduced average density (grad) of G with
rank r, grad r(G). For these classes we prove the existence of several
partition results such as the existence of low tree-width and low tree-depth
colorings. This generalizes and simplifies several earlier results (obtained
for minor closed classes)
Deciding first-order properties of nowhere dense graphs
Nowhere dense graph classes, introduced by Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez,
form a large variety of classes of "sparse graphs" including the class of
planar graphs, actually all classes with excluded minors, and also bounded
degree graphs and graph classes of bounded expansion.
We show that deciding properties of graphs definable in first-order logic is
fixed-parameter tractable on nowhere dense graph classes. At least for graph
classes closed under taking subgraphs, this result is optimal: it was known
before that for all classes C of graphs closed under taking subgraphs, if
deciding first-order properties of graphs in C is fixed-parameter tractable,
then C must be nowhere dense (under a reasonable complexity theoretic
assumption).
As a by-product, we give an algorithmic construction of sparse neighbourhood
covers for nowhere dense graphs. This extends and improves previous
constructions of neighbourhood covers for graph classes with excluded minors.
At the same time, our construction is considerably simpler than those. Our
proofs are based on a new game-theoretic characterisation of nowhere dense
graphs that allows for a recursive version of locality-based algorithms on
these classes. On the logical side, we prove a "rank-preserving" version of
Gaifman's locality theorem.Comment: 30 page
A proof of Mader's conjecture on large clique subdivisions in -free graphs
Given any integers , we show there exists some such
that any -free graph with average degree contains a subdivision of
a clique with at least vertices. In particular,
when this resolves in a strong sense the conjecture of Mader in 1999 that
every -free graph has a subdivision of a clique with order linear in the
average degree of the original graph. In general, the widely conjectured
asymptotic behaviour of the extremal density of -free graphs suggests
our result is tight up to the constant .Comment: 25 pages, 1 figur
Ramsey numbers of cubes versus cliques
The cube graph Q_n is the skeleton of the n-dimensional cube. It is an
n-regular graph on 2^n vertices. The Ramsey number r(Q_n, K_s) is the minimum N
such that every graph of order N contains the cube graph Q_n or an independent
set of order s. Burr and Erdos in 1983 asked whether the simple lower bound
r(Q_n, K_s) >= (s-1)(2^n - 1)+1 is tight for s fixed and n sufficiently large.
We make progress on this problem, obtaining the first upper bound which is
within a constant factor of the lower bound.Comment: 26 page
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