English

Localized Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa Property for Subdivisions

Combinatorics 2025-12-29 v1

Abstract

For a graph HH, we say that HH has the Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa property for subdivisions with function ff, if for every graph GG, either GG contains (as a subgraph) k+1k+1 pairwise disjoint subdivisions of HH or there exists a set XGX\subseteq G such that GXG\setminus X contains no HH-subdivision and Xf(k)|X|\leq f(k). We show that every HH that has the \EP property for subdivision also satisfies a localized version of the \EP property, as follows. Let HH be an nn-vertex graph with m1m\geq 1 edges that has the Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa property for subdivisions with function ff, and let GG be a graph that does not contain k+1k+1 disjoint subdivisions of HH. We demonstrate the existence of a set of at most kk vertex disjoint subdivisions of HH in GG such that in their union, we can find a set XX with the property that GXG \setminus X contains no HH-subdivision and X2f(k)mk+k(mn)|X| \leq 2^{f(k)}mk +k(m-n).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.21530,
  title  = {Localized Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa Property for Subdivisions},
  author = {Icey Siyi Ai and Maria Chudnovsky and Julien Codsi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.21530},
  year   = {2025}
}