English

Treedepth and 2-treedepth in graphs with no long induced paths

Combinatorics 2025-09-16 v2

Abstract

Huynh, Joret, Micek, Seweryn, and Wollan (Combinatorica, 2022) introduced a graph parameter, later referred to as 2-treedepth and denoted td2()\mathrm{td}_2(\cdot). The parameter is the natural 2-connected version of treedepth. For every graph, 2-treedepth is at most the treedepth but can be much smaller: long paths have arbitrary treedepth but 2-treedepth equal to 2. We prove a converse showing that every graph with no induced path on tt vertices and 2-treedepth at most kk has treedepth at most g(k,t)g(k, t). In fact, we determine the value of the function gg up to a multiplicative factor of 2. Additionally, we give asymptotically tight bounds for the problem of forcing long induced paths in graphs with long paths and bounded 2-treedepth or bounded pathwidth. The latter result answers a question of Hilaire and Raymond (E-JC, 2024).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.04445,
  title  = {Treedepth and 2-treedepth in graphs with no long induced paths},
  author = {Jędrzej Hodor and Freddie Illingworth and Tomasz Mazur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.04445},
  year   = {2025}
}