A connected $k$-chromatic graph $G$ is double-critical if for all edges $uv$ of $G$ the graph $G - u - v$ is $(k-2)$-colourable. The only known double-critical $k$-chromatic graph is the complete $k$-graph $K_k$. The conjecture that there are no other double-critical graphs is a special case of a conjecture from 1966, due to Erdős and Lovász. The conjecture has been verified for $k \leq 5$. We prove for $k=6$ and $k=7$ that any non-complete double-critical $k$-chromatic graph is 6-connected and has $K_k$ as a minor.
A connected $k$-chromatic graph $G$ is said to be {\it double-critical} if for all edges $uv$ of $G$ the graph $G - u - v$ is $(k-2)$-colourable. A longstanding conjecture of Erdős and Lovász states that the complete graphs are the only double-critical graphs. Kawarabayashi, Pedersen and Toft [\it{Electron. J. Combin.}, 17(1): Research Paper 87, 2010] proved that every double-critical $k$-chromatic graph with $k \leq 7$ contains a $K_k$ minor. It remains unknown whether an arbitrary double-critical $8$-chromatic graph contains a $K_8$ minor, but in this paper we prove that any double-critical …
A connected $t$-chromatic graph $G$ is \dfn{double-critical} if $G \backslash\{u, v\}$ is $(t-2)$-colorable for each edge $uv\in E(G)$. A long standing conjecture of Erdős and Lovász that the complete graphs are the only double-critical $t$-chromatic graphs remains open for all $t\ge6$. Given the difficulty in settling Erdős and Lovász's conjecture and motivated by the well-known Hadwiger's conjecture, Kawarabayashi, Pedersen and Toft proposed a weaker conjecture that every double-critical $t$-chromatic graph contains a $K_t$ minor and verified their conjecture for $t\le7$. Albar and Gonçalves…
In 2009, Krivelevich and Sudakov studied the existence of large complete minors in $(t,α)$-expanding graphs whenever the expansion factor $t$ becomes super-constant. In this paper, we give an extension of the results of Krivelevich and Sudakov by investigating a connection between the existence of large complete minors in graphs and good vertex expansion properties.
The graph minor structure theorem by Robertson and Seymour shows that every graph that excludes a fixed minor can be constructed by a combination of four ingredients: graphs embedded in a surface of bounded genus, a bounded number of vortices of bounded width, a bounded number of apex vertices, and the clique-sum operation. This paper studies the converse question: What is the maximum order of a complete graph minor in a graph constructed using these four ingredients? Our main result answers this question up to a constant factor.
We provide a short and self-contained proof of the classical result of Kostochka and of Thomason, ensuring that every graph of average degree $d$ has a complete minor of order $d/\sqrt{\log d}$.
It is well-known that in finite graphs, large complete minors/topological minors can be forced by assuming a large average degree. Our aim is to extend this fact to infinite graphs. For this, we generalise the notion of the relative end degree, which had been previously introduced by the first author for locally finite graphs, and show that large minimum relative degree at the ends and large minimum degree at the vertices imply the existence of large complete (topological) minors in infinite graphs with countably many ends.
A parallel minor is obtained from a graph by any sequence of edge contractions and parallel edge deletions. We prove that, for any positive integer k, every internally 4-connected graph of sufficiently high order contains a parallel minor isomorphic to a variation of K_{4,k} with a complete graph on the vertices of degree k, the k-partition triple fan with a complete graph on the vertices of degree k, the k-spoke double wheel, the k-spoke double wheel with axle, the (2k+1)-rung Mobius zigzag ladder, the (2k)-rung zigzag ladder, or K_k. We also find the unavoidable parallel minors of 1-, 2-, an…
The recent paper "Linear Connectivity Forces Large Complete Bipartite Minors" by Boehme et al. relies on a structure theorem for graphs with no H-minor. The sketch provided of how to deduce this theorem from the work of Robertson and Seymour appears to be incomplete. To fill this gap, we modify the main proof of that paper to work with a mere restatement of Robertson and Seymour's original results instead.
We show that if $G$ is a graph on $n$ vertices, with all degrees comparable to some $d = d(n)$, and without a sparse cut, for a suitably chosen notion of sparseness, then it contains a complete minor of order \[ Ω\left( \sqrt{\frac{n d}{\log d}} \right). \] As a corollary we determine the order of a largest complete minor one can guarantee in $d$-regular graphs for which the second largest eigenvalue is bounded away from $d/2$, in $(d/n, o(d))$-jumbled graphs, and in random $d$-regular graphs, for almost all $d = d(n)$.
It has been conjectured that if a finite graph has a vertex coloring such that the union of any two color classes induces a connected graph, then for every set $T$ of vertices containing exactly one member from each color class there exists a complete minor such that $T$ contains exactly one member from each branching set. Here we prove the statement for line graphs.
This paper considers the following question: What is the maximum number of $k$-cliques in an $n$-vertex graph with no $K_t$-minor? This question generalises the extremal function for $K_t$-minors, which corresponds to the $k=2$ case. The exact answer is given for $t\leq 9$ and all values of $k$. We also determine the maximum total number of cliques in an $n$-vertex graph with no $K_t$-minor for $t\leq 9$. Several observations are made about the case of general $t$.
Interval minors of bipartite graphs were introduced by Jacob Fox in the study of Stanley-Wilf limits. Recently, Mohar, Rafiey, Tayfeh-Rezaie and Wu investigated the maximum number of edges in $K_{k,\ell}$-interval minor free bipartite graphs when $k=2$ and $k=3$. In this paper, we investigate the maximum number of edges in $K_{k,\ell}$-interval minor free bipartite graphs for general $k$ and $\ell$. We also study the maximum number of edges in $K_{\ell_1,\ell_2,\cdots,\ell_t}$-interval minor free multipartite graphs.
Hadwiger's conjecture implies that $n\leαh$ for all graphs of order $n$, stability number $α$, and Hadwiger number $h$. Combining ideas of Kawarabayashi et al. and Wood, we prove that $n\le (α-1)(2h-5)+5$ for such graphs if $α\ge 3$ and $h\ge 5$.
Let $G$ be a graph of minimum degree at least $k$ and let $G_p$ be the random subgraph of $G$ obtained by keeping each edge independently with probability $p$. We are interested in the size of the largest complete minor that $G_p$ contains when $p = \frac{1+\varepsilon}{k}$ with $\varepsilon >0$. We show that with high probability $G_p$ contains a complete minor of order $\tildeΩ(\sqrt{k})$, where the $\sim$ hides a polylogarithmic factor. Furthermore, in the case where the order of $G$ is also bounded above by a constant multiple of $k$, we show that this polylogarithmic term can be removed, …
The dichromatic number $\vecχ(D)$ of a digraph $D$ is the smallest $k$ for which it admits a $k$-coloring where every color class induces an acyclic subgraph. Inspired by Hadwiger's conjecture for undirected graphs, several groups of authors have recently studied the containment of directed graph minors in digraphs with given dichromatic number. In this short note we improve several of the existing bounds and prove almost linear bounds by reducing the problem to a recent result of Postle on Hadwiger's conjecture.
Motivated by a conjecture of Gyárfás, recently Böttcher, Hladký, Piguet, and Taraz showed that every collection $T_1,\dots,T_t$ of trees on $n$ vertices with $\sum_{i=1}^te(T_i)\leq \binom{n}{2}$ and with bounded maximum degree, can be packed into the complete graph on $(1+o(1))n$ vertices. We generalise this result where we relax the restriction of packing families of trees to families of graphs of any given non-trivial minor-closed class of graphs.
The Hadwiger number h(G) of a graph G is the maximum size of a complete minor of G. Hadwiger's Conjecture states that h(G) >= χ(G). Since χ(G) α(G) >= |V(G)|, Hadwiger's Conjecture implies that α(G) h(G) >= |V(G)|. We show that (2 α(G) - \lceil log_t(t α(G)/2) \rceil) h(G) \geq |V(G)| where t is approximately 6.83. For graphs with α(G) \geq 14, this improves on a recent result of Kawarabayashi and Song who showed (2 α(G) - 2) h(G) >= |V(G)| when α(G) >= 3.
Let k>0 be an integer, let H be a minor-minimal graph in the projective plane such that every homotopically non-trivial closed curve intersects H at least k times, and let G be the planar double cover of H obtained by lifting G into the universal covering space of the projective plane, the sphere. We prove that G is minor-minimal of branch-width 2k. We also exhibit examples of minor-minimal planar graphs of branch-width 6 that do not arise this way.
Kostochka and Thomason independently showed that any graph with average degree $Ω(r\sqrt{\log r})$ contains a $K_r$ minor. In particular, any graph with chromatic number $Ω(r\sqrt{\log r})$ contains a $K_r$ minor, a partial result towards Hadwiger's famous conjecture. In this paper, we investigate analogues of these results in the directed setting. There are several ways to define a minor in a digraph. One natural way is as follows. A strong $\overrightarrow{K}_r$ minor is a digraph whose vertex set is partitioned into $r$ parts such that each part induces a strongly-connected subdigraph, and …
Extremal properties of sparse graphs, randomly perturbed by the binomial random graph are considered. It is known that every $n$-vertex graph $G$ contains a complete minor of order $Ω(n/α(G))$. We prove that adding $ξn$ random edges, where $ξ> 0$ is arbitrarily small yet fixed, to an $n$-vertex graph $G$ satisfying $α(G) \leq ζ(ξ)n$ asymptotically almost surely results in a graph containing a complete minor of order $\tilde Ω\left( n/\sqrt{α(G)}\right)$; this result is tight up to the implicit logarithmic terms. For complete topological minors, we prove that there exists a constant $C>0$ such …
Huynh et al. recently showed that a countable graph $G$ which contains every countable planar graph as a subgraph must contain arbitrarily large finite complete graphs as topological minors, and an infinite complete graph as a minor. We strengthen this result by showing that the same conclusion holds, if $G$ contains every countable planar graph as a topological minor. In particular, there is no countable planar graph containing every countable planar graph as a topological minor, answering a question by Diestel and Kühn. Moreover, we construct a locally finite planar graph which contains ever…
We show that any self-complementary graph with $n$ vertices contains a $K_{\lfloor \frac{n+1}{2}\rfloor}$ minor. We derive topological properties of self-complementary graphs.
Dirac and Lovász independently characterized the $3$-connected graphs with no pair of vertex-disjoint cycles. Equivalently, they characterized all $3$-connected graphs with no prism-minors. In this paper, we completely characterize the $3$-connected graphs with an edge that is contained in the union of no pair of vertex-disjoint cycles. As applications, we answer the analogous questions for edge-disjoint cycles and for $4$-connected graphs and we completely characterize the $3$-connected graphs with no prism-minor using a specified edge.
Interval minors of bipartite graphs were recently introduced by Jacob Fox in the study of Stanley-Wilf limits. We investigate the maximum number of edges in $K_{r,s}$-interval minor free bipartite graphs. We determine exact values when $r=2$ and describe the extremal graphs. For $r=3$, lower and upper bounds are given and the structure of $K_{3,s}$-interval minor free graphs is studied.
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 $H$ 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 $H$-minor when $H$ is a sparse graph with many high degree vertices. This solves an open problem of Reed and Wood, and also g…
Berenstein, Fomin and Zelevinsky defined functions on double Bruhat cells which they called generalized minors. By relating certain double Bruhat cells to configuration spaces of flags, we give formulas for these generalized minors as tensor invariants. This allows us to verify certain weight identities. The weights of the tensor invariants can then be used to construct the quiver for the cluster structure on the configuration space of three flags. We also show a converse statement--that the weights of tensor invariants can by computed from the structure of the quiver. The weight identities ar…
We study random domino tilings of a Double Aztec diamond, a region consisting of two overlapping Aztec diamonds. The random tilings give rise to two discrete determinantal point processes called the K-and L-particle processes. The correlation kernel of the K-particles was derived in Adler, Johansson and van Moerbeke (2011), who used it to study the limit process of the K-particles with different weights for horizontal and vertical dominos. Let the size of both, the Double Aztec diamond and the overlap, tend to infinity such that the two arctic ellipses just touch; then they show that the fluct…
Graphs that are critical (minimal excluded minors) for embeddability in surfaces are studied. In Part I we consider the structure of graphs with a 2-vertex-cut that are critical with respect to the Euler genus. A general theorem describing the building blocks is presented. These constituents, called hoppers and cascades, are classified for the case when Euler genus is small. As a consequence, the complete list of obstructions of connectivity 2 for embedding graphs into the Klein bottle is obtained. This is the first complete result about obstructions for embeddability of graphs in the Klein bo…
We prove the extremal function for $K_9^=$ minors, where $K_9^=$ denotes the complete graph $K_9$ with two edges removed. In particular, we show that any graph with $n$ vertices and at least $6n - 20$ edges either contains a $K_9^=$ minor or is isomorphic to a graph obtained from disjoint copies of $K_8$ and $K_{2, 2, 2, 2, 2}$ by identifying cliques of size 5. We utilize computer assistance to prove one of our lemmas.
Hadwiger's conjecture claims that any graph with no $K_t$ minor is $(t - 1)$-colorable. This has been proved for $t \le 6$, but remains open for $t \ge 7$. As a variant of this conjecture, graphs with no $K_t^=$ minor have been considered, where $K_t^=$ denotes the complete graph with two edges removed. It has been shown that graphs with no $K_t^=$ minor are $(2t - 8)$-colorable for $t \in \{7, 8\}$. In this paper, we extend this result to the case $t = 9$ and show that graphs with no $K_9^=$ minor are $10$-colorable.
Minors play an important role in extremal graph theory and spectral extremal graph theory. Tait [The Colin de Verdière parameter, excluded minors, and the spectral radius, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 166 (2019) 42--58] determined the maximum spectral radius and characterized the unique extremal graph for $K_r$-minor free graphs of sufficiently large order $n$, he also made great progress on $K_{s,t}$-minor free graphs and posed a conjecture: Let $2\leq s\leq t$ and $n-s+1=pt+q$, where $n$ is sufficiently large and $1\leq q\leq t.$ Then $K_{s-1}\nabla (pK_t\cup K_q)$ is the unique extremal graph w…
We prove that for every graph $H$, there exists $\varepsilon>0$ such that every $n$-vertex graph with no vertex-minors isomorphic to $H$ has a pair of disjoint sets $A$, $B$ of vertices such that $|A|, |B|\ge \varepsilon n$ and $A$ is complete or anticomplete to $B$. We deduce this from recent work of Chudnovsky, Scott, Seymour, and Spirkl (2018). This proves the analog of the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture for vertex-minors.
The Hadwiger number $h(G)$ is the order of the largest complete minor in $G$. Does sufficient Hadwiger number imply a minor with additional properties? In [2], Geelen et al showed $h(G)\geq (1+o(1))ct\sqrt{\ln t}$ implies $G$ has a bipartite subgraph with Hadwiger number at least $t$, for some explicit $c\sim 1.276\dotsc$. We improve this to $h(G) \geq (1+o(1))t\sqrt{\log_2 t}$, and provide a construction showing this is tight. We also derive improved bounds for the topological minor variant of this problem.
In this work we give a complete description of the set covering polyhedron of circulant matrices $C^k_{sk}$ with $s = 2,3$ and $k\geq 3 $ by linear inequalities. In particular, we prove that every non boolean facet defining inequality is associated with a circulant minor of the matrix. We also give a polynomial time separation algorithm for inequalities involved in the description.
We prove that for every integer $k$, there exists $\varepsilon > 0$ such that for every n-vertex graph $G$ with no pivot-minor isomorphic to $C_k$, there exist disjoint sets $A,B \subseteq V(G)$ such that $|A|,|B| \geq \varepsilon n$, and $A$ is either complete or anticomplete to $B$. This proves the analog of the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture for the class of graphs with no pivot-minor isomorphic to $C_k$.
In this paper, we investigate three problems concerning the toric ideal associated to a matroid. Firstly, we list all matroids $\mathcal M$ such that its corresponding toric ideal $I_{\mathcal M}$ is a complete intersection. Secondly, we handle with the problem of detecting minors of a matroid $\mathcal M$ from a minimal set of binomial generators of $I_{\mathcal M}$. In particular, given a minimal set of binomial generators of $I_{\mathcal M}$ we provide a necessary condition for $\mathcal M$ to have a minor isomorphic to $\mathcal U_{d,2d}$ for $d \geq 2$. This condition is proved to be suff…
Let $V_{8}+e$ denote the unique graph obtained from the Wagner graph, also known as $V_{8}$, by adding an edge between two vertices of distance 3 on the Hamilton cycle, which is exactly a split of a minor of the Petersen graph. A complete characterization of all internally 4-connected graphs with no $V_{8}$ minor is given in [J. Maharry and N. Robertson, The structure of graphs not topologically containing the Wagner graph, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 121 (2016) 398-420]. In this paper we characterize all internally 4-connected graphs with no $V_{8}+e$ minor.
Analogous to the case of the binomial random graph $G(d+1,p)$, it is known that the behaviour of a random subgraph of a $d$-dimensional hypercube, where we include each edge independently with probability $p$, which we denote by $Q^d_p$, undergoes a phase transition around the critical value of $p=\frac{1}{d}$. More precisely, standard arguments show that significantly below this value of $p$, with probability tending to one as $d \to \infty$ (whp for short) all components of this graph have order $O(d)$, whereas Ajtai, Komlós and Szemerédi showed that significantly above this value, in the \e…
In this paper, for each graph G, a free edge set F is defined. To study the existence of cycle double cover, the naive cycle double cover of G and F have been defined and studied. In the main theorem, the paper, based on the Kuratowski minor properties, presents a condition to guarantee the existence of a naive cycle double cover for couple (G,F). As a result, the cycle double cover conjecture has been concluded. Moreover, Goddyn's conjecture - asserting if C is a cycle in bridgeless graph G, there is a cycle double cover of G containing C - will have been proved.
A fundamental result of Mader from 1972 asserts that a graph of high average degree contains a highly connected subgraph with roughly the same average degree. We prove a lemma showing that one can strengthen Mader's result by replacing the notion of high connectivity by the notion of vertex expansion. Another well known result in graph theory states that for every integer t there is a smallest real c(t) so that every n-vertex graph with c(t)n edges contains a K_t-minor. Fiorini, Joret, Theis and Wood conjectured that if an n-vertex graph G has (c(t)+ε)n edges then G contains a K_t-minor of ord…
Let ccl(G) denote the order of the largest complete minor in a graph G (also called the contraction clique number) and let G(n,p) denote a random graph on n vertices with edge probability p. Bollobas, Catlin and Erdos asymptotically determined ccl(G (n,p)) when p is a constant. Luczak, Pittel and Wierman gave bounds on ccl(G(n,p)) when p is very close to 1/n, i.e. inside the phase transition. Extending the results of Bollobas, Catlin and Erdos, we determine ccl(G(n,p)) quite tightly, for p>C/n where C is a large constant. If p=C/n, for an arbitrary constant C>1, then we show that asymptoticall…
For a set of five edges, a graph splits if one of the associated Dodgson polynomials is equal to zero. A graph G splitting for every set of five edges is a minor-closed property. As such there is a finite set of forbidden minors F such that if a graph H does not contain a minor isomorphic to any graph in F, then H splits. In this paper we prove that if a graph G is simple, 3-connected, and splits, then G must not contain any minors isomorphic to K5, K3,3, the octahedron, the cube, or a graph that is a single delta-Y transformation away from the cube. As such this is the set of all simple 3-con…
We study graphs where each edge adjacent to a vertex of small degree (7 and 9, respectively) belongs to many triangles (4 and 5, respectively) and show that these graphs contain a complete graph (K_6 and K_7, respectively) as a minor. The second case settles a problem of Nevo (Nevo, 2007). Morevover if each edge of a graph belongs to 6 triangles then the graph contains a K_8-minor or contains K_{2,2,2,2,2} as an induced subgraph. We then show applications of these structural properties to stress freeness and coloration of graphs. In particular, motivated by Hadwiger's conjecture, we prove that…
Graphs that are critical (minimal excluded minors) for embeddability in surfaces are studied. In Part I, it was shown that graphs that are critical for embeddings into surfaces of Euler genus $k$ or for embeddings into nonorientable surface of genus $k$ are built from 3-connected components, called hoppers and cascades. In Part II, all cascades for Euler genus 2 are classified. As a consequence, the complete list of obstructions of connectivity 2 for embedding graphs into the Klein bottle is obtained.
We show that there is a constant c>0 so that for any fixed r which is at least 3 a.a.s. an r-regular graph on n vertices contains a complete graph on c n^{1/2} vertices as a minor. This confirms a conjecture of Markstrom. Since any minor of an r-regular graph on n vertices has at most rn/2 edges, our bound is clearly best possible up to the value of the constant c. As a corollary, we also obtain the likely order of magnitude of the largest complete minor in a random graph G(n,p) during the phase transition (i.e. when pn is close to 1).
A graph is prime (with respect to the split decomposition) if its vertex set does not admit a partition (A,B) (called a split) with |A|, |B| >= 2 such that the set of edges joining A and B induces a complete bipartite graph. We prove that for each n, there exists N such that every prime graph on at least N vertices contains a vertex-minor isomorphic to either a cycle of length n or a graph consisting of two disjoint cliques of size n joined by a matching.
Let $c(H)$ be the smallest value for which $e(G)/|G|\geq c(H)$ implies $H$ is a minor of $G$. We show a new upper bound on $c(H)$, which improves previous bounds for graphs with a vertex partition where some pairs of parts have many more edges than others -- for instance a complete bipartite graph with a small number of edges placed inside one class. We also show a tight matching lower bound for almost all such graphs. We apply these results to show $c(K_{ft/\log t,t}) = (0.638\dotsc+o_{f}(1))t\sqrt{f}$, for $f = o(\log t) = ω(1)$.
