Related papers: Nerves, minors, and piercing numbers

A subset of vertices of a graph is minimal if, within all subsets of the same size, its vertex boundary is minimal. We give a complete, geometric characterization of minimal sets for the planar integer lattice X. Our characterization…

In this paper we prove two main results about obstruction to graph planarity. One is that, if $G$ is a 3-connected graph with a $K_5$-minor and $T$ is a triangle of $G$, then $G$ has a $K_5$-minor $H$, such that $E(T)\cont E(H)$. Other is…

A parallel minor is obtained from a graph by any sequence of edge contractions and parallel edge deletions. We prove that, for any positive integer k, every internally 4-connected graph of sufficiently high order contains a parallel minor…

Let G be a cubic graph, with girth at least five, such that for every partition X,Y of its vertex set with |X|,|Y|>6 there are at least six edges between X and Y. We prove that if there is no homeomorphic embedding of the Petersen graph in…

A minimal separator of a graph $G$ is a set $S \subseteq V(G)$ such that there exist vertices $a,b \in V(G) \setminus S$ with the property that $S$ separates $a$ from $b$ in $G$, but no proper subset of $S$ does. For an integer $k\ge 0$, we…

A graph $G$ is said to be perfectly divisible if for every induced subgraph $H$ of $G$ with at least one edge, the vertex set $V(H)$ can be partitioned into two sets $A, B$ such that $H[A]$ is perfect and $\omega(B) < \omega(H)$. It is easy…

We consider the $H$-Induced Minor problem: for a fixed graph~$H$, decide whether a given graph $G$ contains $H$ as an induced minor. While the problem is known to be NP-complete for some trees~$H$ on more than $2^{300}$ vertices, the…

A curve \gamma in the plane is t-monotone if its interior has at most t-1 vertical tangent points. A family of t-monotone curves F is \emph{simple} if any two members intersect at most once. It is shown that if F is a simple family of n…

The minimum number of distinct eigenvalues, taken over all real symmetric matrices compatible with a given graph $G$, is denoted by $q(G)$. Using other parameters related to $G$, bounds for $q(G)$ are proven and then applied to deduce…

Let $G$ be a graph with a vertex set $V$. The graph $G$ is path-proximinal if there are a semimetric $d \colon V \times V \to [0, \infty[$ and disjoint proximinal subsets of the semimetric space $(V, d)$ such that $V = A \cup B$, and…

A well known theorem in graph theory states that every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices and minimum degree at least $d$ contains a path of length at least $d$, and if $G$ is connected and $n\ge 2d+1$ then $G$ contains a path of length at least…

This paper investigates the computational complexity of deciding whether the vertices of a graph can be partitioned into a disjoint union of cliques and a triangle-free subgraph. This problem is known to be $\NP$-complete on arbitrary…

A tree $T$ in an edge-colored graph is a {\it proper tree} if no two adjacent edges of $T$ receive the same color. Let $G$ be a connected graph of order $n$ and $k$ be a fixed integer with $2\le k\le n$. For a vertex subset $S \subseteq…

Fleming and Foisy recently proved the existence of a digraph whose every embedding contains a $4$-component link, and left open the possibility that a directed graph with an intrinsic $n$-component link might exist. We show that, indeed,…

A graph is chordal if it contains no induced cycle of length four or more. While finite chordal graphs are precisely those admitting tree-decompositions into cliques, this fails for infinite graphs. We establish two results extending the…

A total dominating set of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a subset $D \subseteq V$ such that every vertex in $V$ is adjacent to some vertex in $D$. Finding a total dominating set of minimum size is NP-hard on planar graphs and W[2]-complete on general…

Let $G$ be a simple graph of order $n$ and let $k$ be an integer such that $1\leq k\leq n-1$. The $k$-token graph $G^{\{k\}}$ of $G$ is the graph whose vertices are the $k$-subsets of $V(G)$, where two vertices are adjacent in $G^{\{k\}}$…

For a graph G and an integer t we let mcc_t(G) be the smallest m such that there exists a coloring of the vertices of G by t colors with no monochromatic connected subgraph having more than m vertices. Let F be any nontrivial minor-closed…

Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a class of graphs that is closed under taking subgraphs. We prove that if for some fixed $0<\delta\le 1$, every $n$-vertex graph of $\mathcal{C}$ has a balanced separator of order $O(n^{1-\delta})$, then any depth-$k$…

Suppose $\mathcal{F}$ is a finite family of graphs. We consider the following meta-problem, called $\mathcal{F}$-Immersion Deletion: given a graph $G$ and integer $k$, decide whether the deletion of at most $k$ edges of $G$ can result in a…