The celebrated grid exclusion theorem states that for every h-vertex planar graph H, there is a constant ch such that if a graph G does not contain H as a minor then G has treewidth at most ch. We are looking for patterns of H where this bound can become a low degree polynomial. We provide such bounds for the following parameterized graphs: the wheel (ch=O(h)), the double wheel (ch=O(h2⋅log2h)), any graph of pathwidth at most 2 (ch=O(h2)), and the yurt graph (ch=O(h4)).
@article{arxiv.1305.7112,
title = {Low Polynomial Exclusion of Planar Graph Patterns},
author = {Jean-Florent Raymond and Dimitrios M. Thilikos},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.7112},
year = {2015}
}