Related papers: Hitting all maximum stable sets in $P_5$-free grap…

The toughness of a noncomplete graph $G$ is the maximum real number $t$ such that the ratio of $|S|$ to the number of components of $G-S$ is at least $t$ for every cutset $S$ of $G$, and the toughness of a complete graph is defined to be…

Reed and Wood and independently Norine, Seymour, Thomas, and Wollan proved that for each positive integer $t$ there is a constant $c(t)$ such that every graph on $n$ vertices with no $K_t$-minor has at most $c(t)n$ cliques. Wood asked in…

A family $\mathcal{F}$ of graphs is a \textit{Gallai family} if for every connected graph $G\in \mathcal{F}$, all longest paths in $G$ have a common vertex. While it is not known whether $P_5$-free graphs are a Gallai family, Long Jr.,…

A class $\mathcal{F}$ of graphs is $\chi$-bounded if there is a function $f$ such that $\chi(H)\le f(\omega(H))$ for all induced subgraphs $H$ of a graph in $\mathcal{F}$. If $f$ can be chosen to be a polynomial, we say that $\mathcal{F}$…

For a graph $G$, let $\chi(G)$ and $\omega(G)$ respectively denote the chromatic number and clique number of $G$. We give an explicit structural description of ($P_5$,gem)-free graphs, and show that every such graph $G$ satisfies…

A theta is a graph consisting of two non-adjacent vertices and three internally disjoint paths between them, each of length at least two. For a family $\mathcal{H}$ of graphs, we say a graph $G$ is $\mathcal{H}$-free if no induced subgraph…

We show that many graphs with bounded treewidth can be described as subgraphs of the strong product of a graph with smaller treewidth and a bounded-size complete graph. To this end, define the "underlying treewidth" of a graph class…

Rabern recently proved that any graph with omega >= (3/4)(Delta+1) contains a stable set meeting all maximum cliques. We strengthen this result, proving that such a stable set exists for any graph with omega > (2/3)(Delta+1). This is tight,…

We show that for every two cycles $C,D$, there exists $c>0$ such that if $G$ is both $C$-free and $\overline{D}$-free then $G$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $|G|^c$. ("$H$-free" means with no induced subgraph isomorphic to…

For any finite set $\mathcal{H} = \{H_1,\ldots,H_p\}$ of graphs, a graph is $\mathcal{H}$-subgraph-free if it does not contain any of $H_1,\ldots,H_p$ as a subgraph. In recent work, meta-classifications have been studied: these show that if…

A graph $G$ has a perfect division if its vertex set can be partitioned into two sets $A$, $B$ such that $G[A]$ is perfect and $\omega(G[B]) < \omega(G)$. We call $G$ perfectly divisible if every induced subgraph of $G$ admits a perfect…

The Graph Minors Structure Theorem of Robertson and Seymour asserts that, for every graph $H,$ every $H$-minor-free graph can be obtained by clique-sums of ``almost embeddable'' graphs. Here a graph is ``almost embeddable'' if it can be…

Erd\H{o}s and Hajnal conjectured that for every graph $H$, there exists $c>0$ such that every $H$-free graph $G$ has a clique or a stable set of size at least $|G|^c$ (a graph is $H$-free if it has no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H$).…

We consider problems of finding a maximum size/weight $t$-matching without forbidden subgraphs in an undirected graph $G$ with the maximum degree bounded by $t+1$, where $t$ is an integer greater than $2$. Depending on the variant forbidden…

Given a function $p : V(G)\to \mathbb N$ and an integer $k\ge 0$, define $p_k(G)$ as the number of vertices with $p(v)\ge k$. We say that $p_k(G)$ is bounded for all $\HH$-free graphs if there exists a constant $c=c(\HH)$ such that…

In this paper, we consider the following problem: given a connected graph $G$, can we reduce the domination number of $G$ by one by using only one edge contraction? We show that the problem is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard when restricted to…

Given two graphs $H_1$ and $H_2$, a graph $G$ is $(H_1,H_2)$-free if it contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H_1$ or $H_2$. Let $P_t$ be the path on $t$ vertices. A graph $G$ is $k$-vertex-critical if $G$ has chromatic number $k$ but…

The "slope-number" of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of distinct edge slopes in a straight-line drawing of $G$ in the plane. We prove that for $\Delta\geq5$ and all large $n$, there is a $\Delta$-regular $n$-vertex graph with…

Given a graph $G$, the parameters $\chi(G)$ and $\omega(G)$ respectively denote the chromatic number and the clique number of $G$. A function $f : \mathbb{N} \rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ such that $f(1) = 1$ and $f(x) \geq x$, for all $x \in…

Let $G$ be a bipartite graph, and let $H$ be a bipartite graph with a fixed bipartition $(B_H,W_H)$. We consider three different, natural ways of forbidding $H$ as an induced subgraph in $G$. First, $G$ is $H$-free if it does not contain…