We prove an asymptotically tight bound on the extremal density guaranteeing subdivisions of bounded-degree bipartite graphs with a mild separability condition. As corollaries, we answer several questions of Reed and Wood on embedding sparse minors. Among others,
$\bullet$ $(1+o(1))t^2$ average degree is sufficient to force the $t\times t$ grid as a topological minor;
$\bullet$ $(3/2+o(1))t$ average degree forces every $t$-vertex planar graph as a minor, and the constant $3/2$ is optimal, furthermore, surprisingly, the value is the same for $t$-vertex graphs embeddable on any fixed surface;
$\bullet$ a universal bound of $(2+o(1))t$ on average degree forcing every $t$-vertex graph in any nontrivial minor-closed family as a minor, and the constant 2 is best possible by considering graphs with given treewidth.
For a multigraph $F$, the $k$-subdivision of $F$ is the graph obtained by replacing the edges of $F$ with pairwise internally vertex-disjoint paths of length $k+1$. Conlon and Lee conjectured that if $k$ is even, then the $(k-1)$-subdivision of any multigraph has extremal number $O(n^{1+\frac{1}{k}})$, and moreover, that for any simple graph $F$ there exists $\varepsilon>0$ such that the $(k-1)$-subdivision of $F$ has extremal number $O(n^{1+\frac{1}{k}-\varepsilon})$. In this paper, we prove both conjectures.
Let $H_t$ be the subdivision of $K_t$. Very recently, Conlon and Lee have proved that for any integer $t\geq 3$, there exists a constant $C$ such that $\text{ex}(n,H_t)\leq Cn^{3/2-1/6^t}$. In this paper, we prove that there exists a constant $C'$ such that $\text{ex}(n,H_t)\leq C'n^{3/2-\frac{1}{4t-6}}$.
For a graph $F$, the $k$-subdivision of $F$, denoted $F^k$, is the graph obtained by replacing the edges of $F$ with internally vertex-disjoint paths of length $k$. In this paper, we prove that $\mathrm{ex}(n,K_{s,t}^k)=O(n^{1+\frac{s-1}{sk}})$, which is tight for $t$ sufficiently large. This settles a conjecture of Conlon--Janzer--Lee, and improves on a substantial body of work by Conlon--Janzer--Lee and Jiang--Qiu.
One of the cornerstones of extremal graph theory is a result of Füredi, later reproved and given due prominence by Alon, Krivelevich and Sudakov, saying that if $H$ is a bipartite graph with maximum degree $r$ on one side, then there is a constant $C$ such that every graph with $n$ vertices and $C n^{2 - 1/r}$ edges contains a copy of $H$. This result is tight up to the constant when $H$ contains a copy of $K_{r,s}$ with $s$ sufficiently large in terms of $r$. We conjecture that this is essentially the only situation in which Füredi's result can be tight and prove this conjecture for $r = 2$. …
We prove that for every graph $H$ of maximum degree at most $3$ and for every positive integer $q$ there is a finite $f=f(H,q)$ such that every $K_f$-minor contains a subdivision of $H$ in which every edge is replaced by a path whose length is divisible by $q$. For the case of cycles we show that for $f=O(q \log q)$ every $K_f$-minor contains a cycle of length divisible by $q$, and observe that this settles a recent problem of Friedman and the second author about cycles in (weakly) expanding graphs.
Given a graph $H$, the extremal number $\mathrm{ex}(n,H)$ is the largest number of edges in an $H$-free graph on $n$ vertices. We make progress on a number of conjectures about the extremal number of bipartite graphs. First, writing $K'_{s,t}$ for the subdivision of the bipartite graph $K_{s,t}$, we show that $\mathrm{ex}(n, K'_{s,t}) = O(n^{3/2 - \frac{1}{2s}})$. This proves a conjecture of Kang, Kim and Liu and is tight up to the implied constant for $t$ sufficiently large in terms of $s$. Second, for any integers $s, k \geq 1$, we show that $\mathrm{ex}(n, L) = Θ(n^{1 + \frac{s}{sk+1}})$ fo…
Alon and Krivelevich proved that for every $n$-vertex subcubic graph $H$ and every integer $q \ge 2$ there exists a (smallest) integer $f=f(H,q)$ such that every $K_f$-minor contains a subdivision of $H$ in which the length of every subdivision-path is divisible by $q$. Improving their superexponential bound, we show that $f(H,q) \le \frac{21}{2}qn+8n+14q$, which is optimal up to a constant multiplicative factor.
We determine the maximum number of edges in a $K_4$-minor-free $n$-vertex graph of girth $g$, when $g = 5$ or $g$ is even. We argue that there are many different $n$-vertex extremal graphs, if $n$ is even and $g$ is odd.
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.
We prove that every graph with $n$ vertices and at least $5n-8$ edges contains the Petersen graph as a minor, and this bound is best possible. Moreover we characterise all Petersen-minor-free graphs with at least $5n-11$ edges. It follows that every graph containing no Petersen minor is 9-colourable and has vertex arboricity at most 5. These results are also best possible.
Given graphs G and H with V(G) containing V(H), suppose that we have a u,v-path P_{uv} in G for each edge uv in H. There are obvious additional conditions that ensure that G contains H as a rooted subgraph, subdivision, or immersion; we seek conditions that ensure that G contains H as a rooted minor or minor. This naturally leads to studying sets of paths that form an H-immersion, with the additional property that paths that contain the same vertex must have a common endpoint. We say that $H$ is contractible if, whenever G contains such an H-immersion, G must also contain a rooted H-minor. We …
We prove that every 6-connected graph of girth $\geq 6$ has a $K_6$-minor and thus settle the Jorgensen conjecture for graphs of girth $ \geq 6$. Relaxing the assumption on the girth, we prove that every 6-connected $n$-vertex graph of size $\geq 3 1/5 n-8$ and of girth $\geq 5$ contains a $K_6$-minor.
The study of problems concerning subdivisions of graphs has a rich history in extremal combinatorics. Confirming a conjecture of Burr and Erdős, Alon proved in 1994 that subdivided graphs have linear Ramsey numbers. Later, Alon, Krivelevich and Sudakov showed that every $n$-vertex graph with at least $\varepsilon n^2$ edges contains a $1$-subdivision of the complete graph on $c_{\varepsilon}\sqrt{n}$ vertices, resolving another old conjecture of Erdős. In this paper we consider the directed analogue of these problems and show that every tournament on at least $(2+o(1))k^2$ vertices contains th…
Given any integers $s,t\geq 2$, we show there exists some $c=c(s,t)>0$ such that any $K_{s,t}$-free graph with average degree $d$ contains a subdivision of a clique with at least $cd^{\frac{1}{2}\frac{s}{s-1}}$ vertices. In particular, when $s=2$ this resolves in a strong sense the conjecture of Mader in 1999 that every $C_4$-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 $K_{s,t}$-free graphs suggests our result is tight up to the constant $c(s,t)$.
We prove that for all positive integers $t$, every $n$-vertex graph with no $K_t$-subdivision has at most $2^{50t}n$ cliques. We also prove that asymptotically, such graphs contain at most $2^{(5+o(1))t}n$ cliques, where $o(1)$ tends to zero as $t$ tends to infinity. This strongly answers a question of D. Wood asking if the number of cliques in $n$-vertex graphs with no $K_t$-minor is at most $2^{ct}n$ for some constant $c$.
We prove two results: 1. A graph $G$ on at least seven vertices with a vertex $v$ such that $G-v$ is planar and $t$ triangles satisfies $|E(G)| \leq 3|V(G)|- 9 + t/3$. 2. For $p=2,3,\ldots,9$, a triangle-free graph $G$ on at least $2p-5$ vertices with no $K_p$-minor satisfies $|E(G)|\leq (p-2)|V(G)| - (p-2)^2$.
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…
Let $G$ be a graph of order $n$, and let $A(G)$ and $D(G)$ be the adjacency matrix and the degree matrix of $G$ respectively. Define the convex linear combinations $A_α(G)$ of $A (G)$ and $D (G) $ by $$A_α(G)=αD(G)+(1-α)A(G)$$ for any real number $0\leqα\leq1$. The \emph{$α$-index} of $G$ is the largest eigenvalue of $A_α(G)$. In this paper, we determine the maximum $α$-index and characterize all extremal graphs for $K_r$ minor-free graphs, $K_{s,t}$ minor-free graphs, and star-forest-free graphs for any $0<α<1$ by unified eigenvector approach, respectively.
For a graph $H$, let $c(H)=\inf\{c\,:\,e(G)\geq c|G| \mbox{ implies } G\succ H\,\}$, where $G\succ H$ means that $H$ is a minor of $G$. We show that if $H$ has average degree $d$, then $$ c(H)\le (0.319\ldots+o_d(1))|H|\sqrt{\log d} $$ where $0.319\ldots$ is an explicitly defined constant. This bound matches a corresponding lower bound shown to hold for almost all such $H$ by Norin, Reed, Wood and the first author.
Forbidden minors and subdivisions for toroidal graphs are numerous. We consider the toroidal graphs with no $K_{3,3}$-subdivisions that coincide with the toroidal graphs with no $K_{3,3}$-minors. These graphs admit a unique decomposition into planar components and have short lists of obstructions. We provide the complete lists of four forbidden minors and eleven forbidden subdivisions for the toroidal graphs with no $K_{3,3}$'s and prove that the lists are sufficient.
For a graph $H$ let $c(H)$ denote the supremum of $|E(G)|/|V(G)|$ taken over all non-null graphs $G$ not containing $H$ as a minor. We show that $$c(H) \leq \frac{|V(H)|+\mathrm{comp}(H)}{2}-1,$$ when $H$ is a union of cycles, verifying conjectures of Reed and Wood, and Harvey and Wood. We derive the above result from a theorem which allows us to find two vertex disjoint subgraphs with prescribed densities in a sufficiently dense graph, which might be of independent interest.
A frame template over a field $\mathbb F$ describes the precise way in which a given $\mathbb F$-representable matroid is close to being a frame matroid. Our main result determines the maximum-rank projective or affine geometry that is described by a given frame template over a prime field. Subject to the matroid minors hypothesis of Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle, we use our result to determine, for each projective or affine geometry $N$ over a prime field $\mathbb F$, a best-possible upper bound on the number of elements in a simple $\mathbb F$-representable matroid $M$ of sufficiently large r…
How many cliques can a graph on $n$ vertices have with a forbidden substructure? Extremal problems of this sort have been studied for a long time. This paper studies the maximum possible number of cliques in a graph on $n$ vertices with a forbidden clique subdivision or immersion. We prove for $t$ sufficiently large that every graph on $n \geq t$ vertices with no $K_t$-immersion has at most $2^{t+\log^2 t}n$ cliques, which is sharp apart from the $2^{O(\log^2 t)}$ factor. We also prove that the maximum number of cliques in an $n$-vertex graph with no $K_t$-subdivision is at most $2^{1.817t}n$.…
A subset $D$ of $V$ is \emph{dominating} in $G$ if every vertex of $V-D$ has at least one neighbour in $D;$ let $γ(G)$ be the minimum cardinality among all dominating sets in $G.$ A graph $G$ is $γ$-$q$-{\it critical} if the smallest subset of edges whose subdivision necessarily increases $γ(G)$ has cardinality $q.$ In this paper we consider mainly $γ$-$q$-critical trees and give some general properties of $gamma$-$q$-critical graphs. In particular, we show that if $T$ is a $γ$-$q$-critical tree, then $1 \leq q \leq n(T)-1$ and we characterize extremal trees when $q=n(T)-1.$ Since a subdivisio…
We investigate bounds on the dichromatic number of digraphs which avoid a fixed digraph as a topological minor. For a digraph $F$, denote by $\text{mader}_{\vecχ}(F)$ the smallest integer $k$ such that every $k$-dichromatic digraph contains a subdivision of $F$. As our first main result, we prove that if $F$ is an orientation of a cycle then $\text{mader}_{\vecχ}(F)=v(F)$. This settles a conjecture of Aboulker, Cohen, Havet, Lochet, Moura and Thomassé. We also extend this result to the more general class of orientations of cactus graphs, and to bioriented forests. Our second main result is tha…
For a graph $G$ with $p$ vertices the closed convex cone $\mathbb{S}^p_{\succeq0}(G)$ consists of all real positive semidefinite $p\times p$ matrices with zeros in the off-diagonal entries corresponding to nonedges of $G$. The extremal rays of this cone and their associated ranks have applications to matrix completion problems, maximum likelihood estimation in Gaussian graphical models in statistics, and Gauss elimination for sparse matrices. For a graph $G$ without $K_5$ minors, we show that the normal vectors to the facets of the $(\pm1)$-cut polytope of $G$ specify the off-diagonal entries …
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 $f = o(\log t) = ω(1)$.
The "extremal function" $c(H)$ of a graph $H$ is the supremum of densities of graphs not containing $H$ as a minor, where the "density" of a graph $G$ is the ratio of the number of edges to the number of vertices. Myers and Thomason (2005), Norin, Reed, Thomason and Wood (2020), and Thomason and Wales (2019) determined the asymptotic behaviour of $c(H)$ for all polynomially dense graphs $H$, as well as almost all graphs $H$ of constant density. We explore the asymptotic behavior of the extremal function in the regime not covered by the above results, where in addition to having constant densit…
For random graphs, the containment problem considers the probability that a binomial random graph $G(n,p)$ contains a given graph as a substructure. When asking for the graph as a topological minor, i.e., for a copy of a subdivision of the given graph, it is well-known that the (sharp) threshold is at $p=1/n$. We consider a natural analogue of this question for higher-dimensional random complexes $X^k(n,p)$, first studied by Cohen, Costa, Farber and Kappeler for $k=2$. Improving previous results, we show that $p=Θ(1/\sqrt{n})$ is the (coarse) threshold for containing a subdivision of any fixed…
A thoroughly studied problem in Extremal Graph Theory is to find the best possible density condition in a host graph $G$ for guaranteeing the presence of a particular subgraph $H$ in $G$. One such classical result, due to Bollobás and Thomason, and independently Komlós and Szemerédi, states that average degree $O(k^2)$ guarantees the existence of a $K_k$-subdivision. We study two directions extending this result. On the one hand, Verstraëte conjectured that the quadratic bound $O(k^2)$ would guarantee already two vertex-disjoint isomorphic copies of a $K_k$-subdivision. On the other hand, Thom…
Thomassen formulated the following conjecture: Every $3$-connected cubic graph has a red-blue vertex coloring such that the blue subgraph has maximum degree at most $1$ (that is, it consists of a matching and some isolated vertices) and the red subgraph has minimum degree at least $1$ and contains no $3$-edge path. Since all monochromatic components are small in this coloring and there is a certain irregularity, we call such a coloring \emph{crumby}. Recently, Bellitto, Klimošová, Merker, Witkowski and Yuditsky \cite{counter} constructed an infinite family refuting the above conjecture. Their …
Let $F_s$ be the friendship graph obtained from $s$ triangles by sharing a common vertex. For fixed $s\ge 2$ and sufficiently large $n$, the $F_s$-free graphs of order $n$ which attain the maximal spectral radius was firstly characterized by Cioabă, Feng, Tait and Zhang [Electron. J. Combin. 27 (4) (2020)],and later uniquely determined by Zhai, Liu and Xue [Electron. J. Combin. 29 (3) (2022)]. Recently, the spectral extremal problems was widely studied for graphs containing no $H$ as a minor. For instance, Tait [J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 166 (2019)], Zhai and Lin [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 157 (…
Almost $4$-connectivity is a weakening of $4$-connectivity which allows for vertices of degree three. In this paper we prove the following theorem. Let $G$ be an almost $4$-connected triangle-free planar graph, and let $H$ be an almost $4$-connected non-planar graph such that $H$ has a subgraph isomorphic to a subdivision of $G$. Then there exists a graph $G'$ such that $G'$ is isomorphic to a minor of $H$, and either (i) $G'=G+uv$ for some vertices $u,v\in V(G)$ such that no facial cycle of $G$ contains both $u$ and $v$, or (ii) $G'=G+u_1v_1+u_2v_2$ for some distinct vertices $u_1,u_2,v_1,v_2…
We characterize classes of graphs closed under taking vertex-minors and having no $P_n$ and no disjoint union of $n$ copies of the $1$-subdivision of $K_{1,n}$ for some $n$. Our characterization is described in terms of a tree of radius $2$ whose leaves are labelled by the vertices of a graph $G$, and the width is measured by the maximum possible cut-rank of a partition of $V(G)$ induced by splitting an internal node of the tree to make two components. The minimum width possible is called the depth-$2$ rank-brittleness of $G$. We prove that for all $n$, every graph with sufficiently large dept…
A graph is said to be \textit{$H$-minor free} if it does not contain $H$ as a minor. In this paper, we characteristic the unique extremal graph with maximal $Q$-index among all $n$-vertex $K_{1,t}$-minor free graphs ($t\ge3$).
We show that posets of bounded height whose cover graphs exclude a fixed graph as a topological minor have bounded dimension. This result was already proven by Walczak. However, our argument is entirely combinatorial and does not rely on structural decomposition theorems. Given a poset with large dimension but bounded height, we directly find a large clique subdivision in its cover graph. Therefore, our proof is accessible to readers not familiar with topological graph theory, and it allows us to provide explicit upper bounds on the dimension. With the introduced tools we show a second result …
The spectral extrema problems on forbidding minors have aroused wide attention. Very recently, Zhai and Lin [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 157 (2022) 184--215] determined the extremal graph with maximum adjacency spectral radius among all $K_{s,t}$-minor free graphs of sufficiently large order. The matrix $A_α(G)$ is a generalization of the adjacency matrix $A(G)$, which is defined by Nikiforov \cite{Nikiforov2} as $$A_α(G) = αD(G) + (1 - α)A(G),$$ where $0\leqα\leq1$. Given a graph $F$, the $A_α$-spectral extrema problem is to determine the maximum spectral radius of $A_α(G)$ or characterize the e…
A graph $H$ is an induced subgraph of a graph $G$ if a graph isomorphic to $H$ can be obtained from $G$ by deleting vertices. Recently, there has been significant interest in understanding the unavoidable induced subgraphs for graphs of large treewidth. Motivated by this work, we consider the analogous problem for pathwidth: what are the unavoidable induced subgraphs for graphs of large pathwidth? While resolving this question in the general setting looks challenging, we prove various results for sparse graphs. In particular, we show that every graph with bounded maximum degree and sufficientl…
Developing further Stein's recent notion of relative end degrees in infinite graphs, we investigate which degree assumptions can force a locally finite graph to contain a given finite minor, or a finite subgraph of given minimum degree. This is part of a wider project which seeks to develop an extremal theory of sparse infinite graphs.
Institute for Basic Science（基础科学研究所）；Simon Fraser University（西蒙菲莎大学）；Charles University（查理大学）；Technical University of Denmark（丹麦技术大学）；Monash University（莫纳什大学）
