35 research outputs found
Polynomial treewidth forces a large grid-like-minor
Robertson and Seymour proved that every graph with sufficiently large
treewidth contains a large grid minor. However, the best known bound on the
treewidth that forces an grid minor is exponential in .
It is unknown whether polynomial treewidth suffices. We prove a result in this
direction. A \emph{grid-like-minor of order} in a graph is a set of
paths in whose intersection graph is bipartite and contains a
-minor. For example, the rows and columns of the
grid are a grid-like-minor of order . We prove that polynomial
treewidth forces a large grid-like-minor. In particular, every graph with
treewidth at least has a grid-like-minor of order
. As an application of this result, we prove that the cartesian product
contains a -minor whenever has treewidth at least
.Comment: v2: The bound in the main result has been improved by using the
Lovasz Local Lemma. v3: minor improvements, v4: final section rewritte
Treewidth of display graphs: bounds, brambles and applications
Phylogenetic trees and networks are leaf-labelled graphs used to model evolution. Display graphs are created by identifying common leaf labels in two or more phylogenetic trees or networks. The treewidth of such graphs is bounded as a function of many common dissimilarity measures between phylogenetic trees and this has been leveraged in fixed parameter tractability results. Here we further elucidate the properties of display graphs and their interaction with treewidth. We show that it is NP-hard to recognize display graphs, but that display graphs of bounded treewidth can be recognized in linear time. Next we show that if a phylogenetic network displays (i.e. topologically embeds) a phylogenetic tree, the treewidth of their display graph is bounded by a function of the treewidth of the original network (and also by various other parameters). In fact, using a bramble argument we show that this treewidth bound is sharp up to an additive term of 1. We leverage this bound to give an FPT algorithm, parameterized by treewidth, for determining whether a network displays a tree, which is an intensively-studied problem in the field. We conclude with a discussion on the future use of display graphs and treewidth in phylogenetics