Pure pairs. VI. Excluding an ordered tree
Abstract
A pure pair in a graph is a pair of disjoint sets of vertices such that either every vertex in is adjacent to every vertex in , or there are no edges between and . With Maria Chudnovsky, we recently proved that, for every forest , every graph with at least two vertices that does not contain or its complement as an induced subgraph has a pure pair with linear in . Here we investigate what we can say about pure pairs in an {\em ordered} graph , when we exclude an ordered forest and its complement as induced subgraphs. Fox showed that there need not be a linear pure pair; but Pach and Tomon showed that if is a monotone path then there is a pure pair of size . We generalise this to all ordered forests, at the cost of a slightly worse bound: we prove that, for every ordered forest , every ordered graph with at least two vertices that does not contain or its complement as an induced subgraph has a pure pair of size .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2009.10671,
title = {Pure pairs. VI. Excluding an ordered tree},
author = {Alex Scott and Paul Seymour and Sophie Spirkl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.10671},
year = {2021}
}