Related papers: Killing a Vortex

Robertson and Seymour's celebrated Graph Minor Theorem states that graphs are well-quasi-ordered by the minor relation. Unlike the minor relation, the topological minor relation does not well-quasi-order graphs in general. Among all known…

A major step in the graph minors theory of Robertson and Seymour is the transition from the Grid Theorem which, in some sense uniquely, describes areas of large treewidth within a graph, to a notion of local flatness of these areas in form…

The vertex connectivity of a graph $G$ is the size of the smallest set of vertices $S$ such that $G \setminus S$ is disconnected. For the class of planar graphs, the problem of vertex connectivity is well-studied, both from structural and…

One of the major results of [N. Robertson and P. D. Seymour. Graph minors. XIII. The disjoint paths problem. J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 63(1):65--110, 1995], also known as the weak structure theorem, revealed the local structure of graphs…

A graph $H$ is said to be an induced minor of a graph $G$ if $H$ can be obtained from $G$ by a sequence of vertex deletions and edge contractions. Equivalently, $H$ is an induced minor of $G$ if there exists an induced minor model of $H$ in…

The weak minor G of a graph G is the graph obtained from G by a sequence of edge-contraction operations on G. A weak-minor-closed family of upper embeddable graphs is a set G of upper embeddable graphs that for each graph G in G, every weak…

The packing problem and the covering problem are two of the most general questions in graph theory. The Erd\H{o}s-P\'{o}sa property characterizes the cases when the optimal solutions of these two problems are bounded by functions of each…

We give an algorithm that, given graphs $G$ and $H$, tests whether $H$ is a minor of $G$ in time ${\cal O}_H(n^{1+o(1)})$; here, $n$ is the number of vertices of $G$ and the ${\cal O}_H(\cdot)$-notation hides factors that depend on $H$ and…

We prove that for every graph $H$, if a graph $G$ has no (odd) $H$ minor, then its vertex set $V(G)$ can be partitioned into three sets $X_1$, $X_2$, $X_3$ such that for each~$i$, the subgraph induced on $X_i$ has no component of size…

A graph $H$ is an induced minor of a graph $G$ if it can be obtained from an induced subgraph of $G$ by contracting edges. Otherwise, $G$ is said to be $H$-induced minor-free. Robin Thomas showed that $K_4$-induced minor-free graphs are…

One of the key results in Robertson and Seymour's seminal work on graph minors is the Grid-Minor Theorem (also called the Excluded Grid Theorem). The theorem states that for every grid $H$, every graph whose treewidth is large enough…

We provide proofs certifying that the structure theorem for vertex sets of bounded bidimensionality holds with polynomial bounds. The bidimensionality of vertex sets is a common generalisation of both treewidth and the face-cover-number of…

An immersion of a graph $H$ into a graph $G$ is a one-to-one mapping $f:V(H) \to V(G)$ and a collection of edge-disjoint paths in $G$, one for each edge of $H$, such that the path $P_{uv}$ corresponding to edge $uv$ has endpoints $f(u)$ and…

For an $n$-vertex graph $G$, let $h(G)$ denote the smallest size of a subset of $V(G)$ such that it intersects every maximum independent set of $G$. A conjecture posed by Bollob\'{a}s, Erd\H{o}s and Tuza in early 90s remains widely open,…

A graph $G$ contains another graph $H$ as an immersion if $H$ can be obtained from a subgraph of $G$ by splitting off edges and removing isolated vertices. There is an obvious necessary degree condition for the immersion containment: if $G$…

For every $r \in \mathbb{N}$, let $\theta_r$ denote the graph with two vertices and $r$ parallel edges. The $\theta_r$-girth of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of edges of a subgraph of $G$ that can be contracted to $\theta_r$. This…

The Graph Minor Theorem of Robertson and Seymour asserts that any graph property, whatsoever, is determined by an associated finite list of graphs. We view this as an impressive generalization of Kuratowski's theorem, which characterizes…

We prove blow-up structure theorems for graphs excluding a tree or an apex-tree as a minor. First, we show that for every $t$-vertex tree $T$ with $t\geq 3$ and radius $h$, and every graph $G$ excluding $T$ as a minor, there exists a graph…

Let $G$ be a graph and $t\ge 0$. A new graph parameter termed the largest reduced neighborhood clique cover number of $G$, denoted by ${\hat\beta}_t(G)$, is introduced. Specifically, ${\hat\beta}_t(G)$ is the largest, overall $t$-shallow…

In the first paper of the Graph Minors series [JCTB '83], Robertson and Seymour proved the Forest Minor theorem: the $H$-minor-free graphs have bounded pathwidth if and only if $H$ is a forest. In recent years, considerable effort has been…