Boxicity and topological invariants

The boxicity of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is the smallest integer $k$ for which there exist $k$ interval graphs $G_i=(V,E_i)$, $1 \le i \le k$, such that $E=E_1 \cap \cdots \cap E_k$. In the first part of this note, we prove that every graph on $m$ edges has boxicity $O(\sqrt{m \log m})$, which is asymptotically best possible. We use this result to study the connection between the boxicity of graphs and their Colin de Verdi\`ere invariant, which share many similarities. Known results concerning the two parameters suggest that for any graph $G$, the boxicity of $G$ is at most the Colin de Verdi\`ere invariant of $G$, denoted by $\mu(G)$. We observe that every graph $G$ has boxicity $O(\mu(G)^4(\log \mu(G))^2)$, while there are graphs $G$ with boxicity $\Omega(\mu(G)\sqrt{\log \mu(G)})$. In the second part of this note, we focus on graphs embeddable on a surface of Euler genus $g$. We prove that these graphs have boxicity $O(\sqrt{g}\log g)$, while some of these graphs have boxicity $\Omega(\sqrt{g \log g})$. This improves the previously best known upper and lower bounds. These results directly imply a nearly optimal bound on the dimension of the adjacency poset of graphs on surfaces.Comment: 6 page

Polynomial expansion and sublinear separators

Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a class of graphs that is closed under taking subgraphs. We prove that if for some fixed $0<\delta\le 1$, every $n$-vertex graph of $\mathcal{C}$ has a balanced separator of order $O(n^{1-\delta})$, then any depth-$k$ minor (i.e. minor obtained by contracting disjoint subgraphs of radius at most $k$) of a graph in $\mathcal{C}$ has average degree $O\big((k \text{ polylog }k)^{1/\delta}\big)$. This confirms a conjecture of Dvo\v{r}\'ak and Norin.Comment: 6 pages, no figur

On cubic bridgeless graphs whose edge-set cannot be covered by four perfect matchings

The problem of establishing the number of perfect matchings necessary to cover the edge-set of a cubic bridgeless graph is strictly related to a famous conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson. In this paper we prove that deciding whether this number is at most 4 for a given cubic bridgeless graph is NP-complete. We also construct an infinite family $\cal F$ of snarks (cyclically 4-edge-connected cubic graphs of girth at least five and chromatic index four) whose edge-set cannot be covered by 4 perfect matchings. Only two such graphs were known. It turns out that the family $\cal F$ also has interesting properties with respect to the shortest cycle cover problem. The shortest cycle cover of any cubic bridgeless graph with $m$ edges has length at least $\tfrac43m$, and we show that this inequality is strict for graphs of $\cal F$. We also construct the first known snark with no cycle cover of length less than $\tfrac43m+2$.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Distance-two coloring of sparse graphs

Consider a graph $G = (V, E)$ and, for each vertex $v \in V$, a subset $\Sigma(v)$ of neighbors of $v$. A $\Sigma$-coloring is a coloring of the elements of $V$ so that vertices appearing together in some $\Sigma(v)$ receive pairwise distinct colors. An obvious lower bound for the minimum number of colors in such a coloring is the maximum size of a set $\Sigma(v)$, denoted by $\rho(\Sigma)$. In this paper we study graph classes $F$ for which there is a function $f$, such that for any graph $G \in F$ and any $\Sigma$, there is a $\Sigma$-coloring using at most $f(\rho(\Sigma))$ colors. It is proved that if such a function exists for a class $F$, then $f$ can be taken to be a linear function. It is also shown that such classes are precisely the classes having bounded star chromatic number. We also investigate the list version and the clique version of this problem, and relate the existence of functions bounding those parameters to the recently introduced concepts of classes of bounded expansion and nowhere-dense classes.Comment: 13 pages - revised versio

Box representations of embedded graphs

A $d$-box is the cartesian product of $d$ intervals of $\mathbb{R}$ and a $d$-box representation of a graph $G$ is a representation of $G$ as the intersection graph of a set of $d$-boxes in $\mathbb{R}^d$. It was proved by Thomassen in 1986 that every planar graph has a 3-box representation. In this paper we prove that every graph embedded in a fixed orientable surface, without short non-contractible cycles, has a 5-box representation. This directly implies that there is a function $f$, such that in every graph of genus $g$, a set of at most $f(g)$ vertices can be removed so that the resulting graph has a 5-box representation. We show that such a function $f$ can be made linear in $g$. Finally, we prove that for any proper minor-closed class $\mathcal{F}$, there is a constant $c(\mathcal{F})$ such that every graph of $\mathcal{F}$ without cycles of length less than $c(\mathcal{F})$ has a 3-box representation, which is best possible.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures - revised versio

Equitable partition of graphs into induced forests

An equitable partition of a graph $G$ is a partition of the vertex-set of $G$ such that the sizes of any two parts differ by at most one. We show that every graph with an acyclic coloring with at most $k$ colors can be equitably partitioned into $k-1$ induced forests. We also prove that for any integers $d\ge 1$ and $k\ge 3^{d-1}$, any $d$-degenerate graph can be equitably partitioned into $k$ induced forests. Each of these results implies the existence of a constant $c$ such that for any $k \ge c$, any planar graph has an equitable partition into $k$ induced forests. This was conjectured by Wu, Zhang, and Li in 2013.Comment: 4 pages, final versio

A superlinear bound on the number of perfect matchings in cubic bridgeless graphs

Lovasz and Plummer conjectured in the 1970's that cubic bridgeless graphs have exponentially many perfect matchings. This conjecture has been verified for bipartite graphs by Voorhoeve in 1979, and for planar graphs by Chudnovsky and Seymour in 2008, but in general only linear bounds are known. In this paper, we provide the first superlinear bound in the general case.Comment: 54 pages v2: a short (missing) proof of Lemma 10 was adde

Small feedback vertex sets in planar digraphs

Let $G$ be a directed planar graph on $n$ vertices, with no directed cycle of length less than $g\ge 4$. We prove that $G$ contains a set $X$ of vertices such that $G-X$ has no directed cycle, and $|X|\le \tfrac{5n-5}9$ if $g=4$, $|X|\le \tfrac{2n-5}4$ if $g=5$, and $|X|\le \tfrac{2n-6}{g}$ if $g\ge 6$. This improves recent results of Golowich and Rolnick.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure - v3 final versio

Long induced paths in graphs

We prove that every 3-connected planar graph on $n$ vertices contains an induced path on $\Omega(\log n)$ vertices, which is best possible and improves the best known lower bound by a multiplicative factor of $\log \log n$. We deduce that any planar graph (or more generally, any graph embeddable on a fixed surface) with a path on $n$ vertices, also contains an induced path on $\Omega(\sqrt{\log n})$ vertices. We conjecture that for any $k$, there is a contant $c(k)$ such that any $k$-degenerate graph with a path on $n$ vertices also contains an induced path on $\Omega((\log n)^{c(k)})$ vertices. We provide examples showing that this order of magnitude would be best possible (already for chordal graphs), and prove the conjecture in the case of interval graphs.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures - revised versio