English

Universal planar graphs for the topological minor relation

Combinatorics 2022-03-21 v3

Abstract

Huynh et al. recently showed that a countable graph GG which contains every countable planar graph as a subgraph must contain arbitrarily large finite complete graphs as topological minors, and an infinite complete graph as a minor. We strengthen this result by showing that the same conclusion holds, if GG contains every countable planar graph as a topological minor. In particular, there is no countable planar graph containing every countable planar graph as a topological minor, answering a question by Diestel and K\"uhn. Moreover, we construct a locally finite planar graph which contains every locally finite planar graph as a topological minor. This shows that in the above result it is not enough to require that GG contains every locally finite planar graph as a topological minor.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2203.03477,
  title  = {Universal planar graphs for the topological minor relation},
  author = {Florian Lehner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.03477},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:04:45.476Z