English

Treewidth of the $n \times n$ toroidal grid

Combinatorics 2026-05-21 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

In this paper, we show that the treewidth of the n×nn \times n toroidal grid is 2n12n-1 for all n5n \ge 5. This closes the gap between the previously known upper bound of 2n12n-1 (Ellis and Warren, DAM 2008) and the lower bound of 2n22n-2 (Kiyomi, Okamoto, and Otachi, DAM 2016). To establish the matching lower bound, we construct a bramble of maximum order by utilizing maximum components obtained after removing 2n12n-1 vertices. Our construction relies on the vertex-isoperimetric properties of the infinite grid to establish tight lower bounds on neighborhood sizes, combined with a careful analysis of balls of radius n/21n/2-1 and their boundaries to overcome structural obstructions when nn is even.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.21015,
  title  = {Treewidth of the $n \times n$ toroidal grid},
  author = {Tatsuya Gima and Hiraku Morimoto and Yuto Okada and Yota Otachi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.21015},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

14 pages, 7 figures