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Related papers: Halfway to Hadwiger's Conjecture

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Hadwiger's conjecture asserts that if a simple graph $G$ has no $K_{t+1}$ minor, then its vertex set $V(G)$ can be partitioned into $t$ stable sets. This is still open, but we prove under the same hypotheses that $V(G)$ can be partitioned…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-12-24 Katherine Edwards , Dong Yeap Kang , Jaehoon Kim , Sang-il Oum , Paul Seymour

We present a necessary and sufficient condition for a graph of odd-girth $2k+1$ to bound the class of $K_4$-minor-free graphs of odd-girth (at least) $2k+1$, that is, to admit a homomorphism from any such $K_4$-minor-free graph. This yields…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-01-31 Laurent Beaudou , Florent Foucaud , Reza Naserasr

The classical Hadwiger conjecture dating back to 1940's states that any graph of chromatic number at least $r$ has the clique of order $r$ as a minor. Hadwiger's conjecture is an example of a well studied class of problems asking how large…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-02-09 M. Bucić , J. Fox , B. Sudakov

In 1880, P. G. Tait showed that the four colour theorem is equivalent to the assertion that every 3-regular planar graph without cut-edges is 3-edge-colourable, and in 1891, J. Petersen proved that every 3-regular graph with at most two…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-09-18 Ortho Flint , Stuart Rankin

A graph $G$ is $(d_1,\ldots,d_k)$-colorable if its vertex set can be partitioned into $k$ sets $V_1,\ldots,V_k$, such that for each $i\in\{1, \ldots, k\}$, the subgraph of $G$ induced by $V_i$ has maximum degree at most $d_i$. The Four…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-18 Ilkyoo Choi , Louis Esperet

A graph $G$ is $k$-{\em critical} if it has chromatic number $k$, but every proper subgraph of $G$ is $(k-1)$--colorable. Let $f_k(n)$ denote the minimum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $k$-critical graph. In a very recent paper, we gave a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-09-07 Alexandr Kostochka , Matthew Yancey

This paper addresses the following question for a given graph $H$: what is the minimum number $f(H)$ such that every graph with average degree at least $f(H)$ contains $H$ as a minor? Due to connections with Hadwiger's Conjecture, this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-02-20 Bruce Reed , David R. Wood

We demonstrate that for every positive integer $\Delta$, every K\_4-minor-free graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ admits an equitable coloring with k colors wherek $\ge$ ($\Delta$+3)/2. This bound is tight and confirms a conjecture by Zhang…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-03-08 Rémi De Joannis de Verclos , Jean-Sébastien Sereni

A $K_t$-expansion consists of $t$ vertex-disjoint trees, every two of which are joined by an edge. We call such an expansion odd if its vertices can be two-colored so that the edges of the trees are bichromatic but the edges between trees…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-05-16 Yuqing Ji , Zi-Xia Song , Evan Weiss , Xia Zhang

An equitable $k$-coloring of a graph is a proper $k$-coloring where the sizes of any two different color classes differ by at most one. In 1973, Meyer conjectured that every connected graph $G$ has an equitable $k$-coloring for some $k\leq…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-07 Yangyang Cheng , Zhenyu Li , Wanting Sun , Guanghui Wang

In the first partial result toward Steinberg's now-disproved three coloring conjecture, Abbott and Zhou used a counting argument to show that every planar graph without cycles of lengths 4 through 11 is 3-colorable. Implicit in their proof…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-09-13 Zachary Hamaker , Vincent Vatter

For a graph G, let h(G) denote the largest k such that G has k pairwise disjoint pairwise adjacent connected nonempty subgraphs, and let s(G) denote the largest k such that G has k pairwise disjoint pairwise adjacent connected subgraphs of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-08-07 Matthias Kriesell

A graph H is called common if the total number of copies of H in every graph and its complement asymptotically minimizes for random graphs. A former conjecture of Burr and Rosta, extending a conjecture of Erdos asserted that every graph is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-07-31 Hamed Hatami , Jan Hladky , Daniel Kral , Serguei Norine , Alexander Razborov

We prove that every $n$-vertex $K_t$-minor-free graph $G$ of maximum degree $\Delta$ has a set $F$ of $O(t^2(\log t)^{1/4}\sqrt{\Delta n})$ edges such that every component of $G - F$ has at most $n/2$ vertices. This is best possible up to…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-10-24 Gwenaël Joret , William Lochet , Michał T. Seweryn

Let $P_k$ be a path, $C_k$ a cycle on $k$ vertices, and $K_{k,k}$ a complete bipartite graph with $k$ vertices on each side of the bipartition. We prove that (1) for any integers $k, t>0$ and a graph $H$ there are finitely many subgraph…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-03-08 Marcin Kamiński , Anna Pstrucha

Let $G$ be a simple graph with maximum degree $\Delta(G)$. A subgraph $H$ of $G$ is overfull if $|E(H)|>\Delta(G)\lfloor \frac{1}{2}|V(H)| \rfloor$. Chetwynd and Hilton in 1986 conjectured that a graph $G$ with $\Delta(G)>\frac{1}{3}|V(G)|$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-06-28 Songling Shan

We study graphs where each edge adjacent to a vertex of small degree (7 and 9, respectively) belongs to many triangles (4 and 5, respectively) and show that these graphs contain a complete graph (K_6 and K_7, respectively) as a minor. The…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-04-22 Boris Albar , Daniel Gonçalves

A fundamental result of Mader from 1972 asserts that a graph of high average degree contains a highly connected subgraph with roughly the same average degree. We prove a lemma showing that one can strengthen Mader's result by replacing the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-05-21 Asaf Shapira , Benny Sudakov

Given a graph $H$ and an integer $k\geqslant 2$, let $f_{k}(n,H)$ be the smallest number of colors $C$ such that there exists a proper edge-coloring of the complete graph $K_{n}$ with $C$ colors containing no $k$ vertex-disjoint color…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-09-03 Zixiang Xu , Gennian Ge

Motivated by different characterizations of planar graphs and the 4-Color Theorem, several structural results concerning graphs of high chromatic number have been obtained. Toward strengthening some of these results, we consider the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-07 Andrea Jiménez , Jessica McDonald , Reza Naserasr , Kathryn Nurse , Daniel A. Quiroz