Classes with bounded expansion, which generalise classes that exclude a topological minor, have recently been introduced by Nešetřil and Ossona de Mendez. These classes are defined by the fact that the maximum average degree of a shallow minor of a graph in the class is bounded by a function of the depth of the shallow minor. Several linear-time algorithms are known for bounded expansion classes (such as subgraph isomorphism testing), and they allow restricted homomorphism dualities, amongst other desirable properties. In this paper we establish two new characterisations of bounded expansion classes, one in terms of so-called topological parameters, the other in terms of controlling dense parts. The latter characterisation is then used to show that the notion of bounded expansion is compatible with Erdös-Rényi model of random graphs with constant average degree. In particular, we prove that for every fixed $d>0$, there exists a class with bounded expansion, such that a random graph of order $n$ and edge probability $d/n$ asymptotically almost surely belongs to the class. We then present several new examples of classes with bounded expansion that do not exclude some topological minor, and appear naturally in the context of graph drawing or graph colouring. In particular, we prove that the following classes have bounded expansion: graphs that can be drawn in the plane with a bounded number of crossings per edge, graphs with bounded stack number, graphs with bounded queue number, and graphs with bounded non-repetitive chromatic number. We also prove that graphs with `linear' crossing number are contained in a topologically-closed class, while graphs with bounded crossing number are contained in a minor-closed class.
Graphs derived from groups are a widely studied class of graphs, motivated by their highly symmetric structure. In particular, G-graphs offer an easy and interesting alternative construction of semi-symmetric graphs. After recalling the main properties of these graphs, this papers gives an extended characterisation of G-graphs and develops the link between bipartite G-graphs and incidence graphs. It appears that these two classes of graphs have a wide overlapping despite having completely different constructions. We give partial answers to the problem of finding which complete simple graphs ha…
We characterise those permutation classes whose simple permutations are monotone griddable. This characterisation is obtained by identifying a set of nine substructures, at least one of which must occur in any simple permutation containing a long sum of 21s.
We introduce and characterise grid classes, which are natural generalisations of other well-studied permutation classes. This characterisation allows us to give a new, short proof of the Fibonacci dichotomy: the number of permutations of length n in a permutation class is either at least as large as the nth Fibonacci number or is eventually polynomial.
Koh and Tay introduced a new family of graphs, $G$ vertex-multiplications, as an extension of complete $n$-partite graphs. They proved a fundamental classification of $G$ vertex-multiplications into three classes $\mathscr{C}_0, \mathscr{C}_1$ and $\mathscr{C}_2$. It was shown that any vertex-multiplication of a tree with diameter at least 3 does not belong to the class $\mathscr{C}_2$. Furthermore, for vertex-multiplications of trees with diameter $5$, some necessary and sufficient conditions for $\mathscr{C}_0$ were established. In this paper, we give a complete characterisation of vertex-mu…
This work provides a structural characterisation of hereditary graph classes that do not contain a star forest, several graphs obtained from star forests by subset complementation, a union of cliques, and the complement of a union of cliques as induced subgraphs. This provides, for instance, structural results for graph classes not containing a matching and several complements of a matching. In terms of the speed of hereditary graph classes, our results imply that all such classes have at most factorial speed of growth.
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).
An integer additive set-indexer is defined as an injective function $f:V(G)\rightarrow 2^{\mathbb{N}_0}$ such that the induced function $g_f:E(G) \rightarrow 2^{\mathbb{N}_0}$ defined by $g_f (uv) = f(u)+ f(v)$ is also injective. An integer additive set-indexer is said to be $k$-uniform if $|g_f(e)| = k$ for all $e\in E(G)$. An integer additive set-indexer $f$ is said to be a weak integer additive set-indexer if $|g_f(uv)|=max(|f(u)|,|f(v)|)$ for all $u,v\in V(G)$. In this paper, we study the characteristics of certain graphs and graph classes which admit weak integer additive set-indexers.
We study restricted homomorphism dualities in the context of classes with bounded expansion. This presents a generalization of restricted dualities obtained earlier for bounded degree graphs and also for proper minor closed classes. This is related to distance coloring of graphs and to the ''approximative version'' of Hadwiger conjecture.
We characterise those classes of permutations having the property that for every tableau shape either every permutation of that shape or no permutation of that shape belongs to the class. The characterisation is in terms of the dominance order for partitions (and their conjugates) and shows that for any such class there is a constant k such that no permutation in the class can contain both an increasing and a decreasing sequence of length k.
A class of graphs G is chi-bounded if the chromatic number of graphs in G is bounded by a function of the clique number. We show that if a class G is chi-bounded,then every class of graphs admitting a decomposition along cuts of small rank to graphs from G is chi-bounded. As a corollary, we obtain that every class of graphs with bounded rank-width (or equivalently, clique-width) is chi-bounded.
An integer additive set-indexer is defined as an injective function $f:V(G)\rightarrow 2^{\mathbb{N}_0}$ such that the induced function $g_f:E(G) \rightarrow 2^{\mathbb{N}_0}$ defined by $g_f (uv) = f(u)+ f(v)$ is also injective, where $f(u)+f(v)$ is the sumset of $f(u)$ and $f(v)$. If $g_f(uv)=k~\forall~uv\in E(G)$, then $f$ is said to be a $k$-uniform integer additive set-indexers. An integer additive set-indexer $f$ is said to be a strong integer additive set-indexer if $|g_f(uv)|=|f(u)|.|f(v)|~\forall ~ uv\in E(G)$. We already have some characteristics of the graphs which admit strong inte…
Cameron-Liebler sets were originally defined as collections of lines (`line classes') in $\mathrm{PG}(3,q)$ sharing certain properties with line classes of symmetric tactical decompositions. While there are many equivalent characterisations, these objects are defined as sets of lines whose characteristic vector lies in the image of the transpose of the point-line incidence matrix of $\mathrm{PG}(3,q)$, and so combinatorially they behave like a union of pairwise disjoint point-pencils. Recently, the concept of a Cameron-Liebler set has been generalised to several other settings. In this article…
The $G$-graph $Γ(G,S)$ is a graph from the group $G$ generated by $S\subseteq G$, where the vertices are the right cosets of the cyclic subgroups $\langle s \rangle, s\in S$ with $k$-edges between two distinct cosets if there is an intersection of $k$ elements. In this thesis, after presenting some important properties of $G$-graphs, we show how the $G$-graph depends on the generating set of the group. We give the $G$-graphs of the symmetric group, alternating group and the semi-dihedral group with respect to various generating sets. We give a characterisation of finite $G$-graphs; in the gene…
$χ$-bounded classes are studied here in the context of star colorings and more generally $χ_p$-colorings. This leads to natural extensions of the notion of bounded expansion class and to structural characterization of these. In this paper we solve two conjectures related to star coloring boundedness. One of the conjectures is disproved and in fact we determine which weakening holds true. We give structural characterizations of (strong and weak) $χ_p$-bounded classes. On the way, we generalize a result of Wood relating the chromatic number of a graph to the star chromatic number of its $1$-subd…
Classes of graphs with bounded expansion are 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, ∇r(G). These classes are also characterized by the existence of several partition results such as the existence of low tree-width and low tree-depth colorings. These results lead to several new linear time algorithms, such as an algorithm for counting all the isomorphs of a fixed graph in an input graph or an algorithm for checking whether there exists a subset…
The "clustered chromatic number" of a class of graphs is the minimum integer $k$ such that for some integer $c$ every graph in the class is $k$-colourable with monochromatic components of size at most $c$. We determine the clustered chromatic number of any minor-closed class with bounded treedepth, and prove a best possible upper bound on the clustered chromatic number of any minor-closed class with bounded pathwidth. As a consequence, we determine the fractional clustered chromatic number of every minor-closed class.
The clustered chromatic number of a graph class is the minimum integer $t$ such that for some $C$ the vertices of every graph in the class can be colored in $t$ colors so that every monochromatic component has size at most $C$. We show that the clustered chromatic number of the class of graphs embeddable on a given surface is four, proving the conjecture of Esperet and Ochem. Additionally, we study the list version of the concept and characterize the minor-closed classes of graphs of bounded treewidth with given clustered list chromatic number. We further strengthen the above results to solve …
For a set of matroids $\mathcal{M}$, let $ex_\mathcal{M}(n)$ be the maximum size of a simple rank-$n$ matroid in $\mathcal{M}$. We prove that, for any finite field $\mathbb{F}$, if $\mathcal{M}$ is a minor-closed class of $\mathbb{F}$-representable matroids of bounded branch-width, then $\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} ex_\mathcal{M}(n) / n$ exists and is a rational number, $Δ$. We also show that $ex_\mathcal{M}(n) - Δn$ is periodic when $n$ is sufficiently large and that $ex_\mathcal{M}$ is achieved by a subclass of $\mathcal{M}$ of bounded path-width.
By extending the notion of grid classes to include infinite grids, we establish a structural characterisation of the simple permutations in Av(4231, 35142, 42513, 351624), a pattern class which has three different connections with algebraic geometry, including the specification of indices of Schubert varieties defined by inclusions. This characterisation leads to the enumeration of the class.
We show that a graph class $\cal G$ has bounded expansion if and only if it has bounded $r$-neighbourhood complexity, i.e. for any vertex set $X$ of any subgraph $H$ of $G\in\cal G$, the number of subsets of $X$ which are exact $r$-neighbourhoods of vertices of $H$ on $X$ is linear to the size of $X$. This is established by bounding the $r$-neighbourhood complexity of a graph in terms of both its $r$-centred colouring number and its weak $r$-colouring number, which provide known characterisations to the property of bounded expansion.
We prove that, on bounded expansion classes, every first-order formula with modulo counting is equivalent, in a linear-time computable monadic expansion, to an existential first-order formula. As a consequence, we derive, on bounded expansion classes, that first-order transductions with modulo counting have the same encoding power as existential first-order transductions. Also, modulo-counting first-order model checking and computation of the size of sets definable in modulo-counting first-order logic can be achieved in linear time on bounded expansion classes. As an application, we prove that…
A proper vertex coloring of a graph is said to be locally identifying if the sets of colors in the closed neighborhood of any two adjacent non-twin vertices are distinct. The lid-chromatic number of a graph is the minimum number of colors used by a locally identifying vertex-coloring. In this paper, we prove that for any graph class of bounded expansion, the lid-chromatic number is bounded. Classes of bounded expansion include minor closed classes of graphs. For these latter classes, we give an alternative proof to show that the lid-chromatic number is bounded. This leads to an explicit upper …
We prove that a minor-closed class of graphs has bounded layered pathwidth if and only if some apex-forest is not in the class. This generalises a theorem of Robertson and Seymour, which says that a minor-closed class of graphs has bounded pathwidth if and only if some forest is not in the class.
We give a number of approximation metatheorems for monotone maximization problems expressible in the first-order logic, in substantially more general settings than the previously known. We obtain * constant-factor approximation algorithm in any class of graphs with bounded expansion, * a QPTAS in any class with strongly sublinear separators, and * a PTAS in any fractionally treewidth-fragile class (which includes all common classes with strongly sublinear separators. Moreover, our tools also give an exact subexponential-time algorithm in any class with strongly sublinear separators.
The notion of bounded expansion captures uniform sparsity of graph classes and renders various algorithmic problems that are hard in general tractable. In particular, the model-checking problem for first-order logic is fixed-parameter tractable over such graph classes. With the aim of generalizing such results to dense graphs, we introduce classes of graphs with structurally bounded expansion, defined as first-order interpretations of classes of bounded expansion. As a first step towards their algorithmic treatment, we provide their characterization analogous to the characterization of classes…
We present a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for first-order model checking on interpretations of graph classes with bounded local cliquewidth. Notably, this includes interpretations of planar graphs, and more generally, of classes of bounded genus. To obtain this result we develop a new tool which works in a very general setting of dependent classes and which we believe can be an important ingredient in achieving similar results in the future.
Classes with bounded rankwidth are MSO-transductions of trees and classes with bounded linear rankwidth are MSO-transductions of paths -- a result that shows a strong link between the properties of these graph classes considered from the point of view of structural graph theory and from the point of view of finite model theory. We take both views on classes with bounded linear rankwidth and prove structural and model theoretic properties of these classes. The structural results we obtain are the following. 1) The number of unlabeled graphs of order $n$ with linear rank-width at most~$r$ is at …
Two Delone sets are bounded distance equivalent to each other if there is a bijection between them such that the distance of corresponding points is uniformly bounded. Bounded distance equivalence is an equivalence relation. We show that the hull of a repetitive Delone set with finite local complexity has either one equivalence class or uncountably many. A very similar result is proven in arXiv:2011.00106 [math.MG].
We consider hereditary classes of graphs equipped with a total order. We provide multiple equivalent characterisations of those classes which have bounded twin-width. In particular, we prove a grid theorem for classes of ordered graphs which have unbounded twin-width. From this we derive that the model-checking problem for first-order logic is fixed-parameter tractable over a hereditary class of ordered graphs if, and -- under common complexity-theoretic assumptions -- only if the class has bounded twin-width. For hereditary classes of ordered graphs, we show that bounded twin-width is equival…
We prove that every class of graphs $\mathscr C$ that is monadically stable and has bounded twin-width can be transduced from some class with bounded sparse twin-width. This generalizes analogous results for classes of bounded linear cliquewidth and of bounded cliquewidth. It also implies that monadically stable classes of bounded twin-widthare linearly $χ$-bounded.
A large number of NP-hard graph problems become polynomial-time solvable on graph classes where the mim-width is bounded and quickly computable. Hence, when solving such problems on special graph classes, it is helpful to know whether the graph class under consideration has bounded mim-width. We first extend the toolkit for proving (un)boundedness of mim-width of graph classes. This enables us to initiate a systematic study into bounding mim-width from the perspective of hereditary graph classes. For a given graph $H$, the class of $H$-free graphs has bounded mim-width if and only if it has bo…
