Related papers: Catching Rats in $H$-minor-free Graphs

A $k$-ladder is the graph obtained from two disjoint paths, each with $k$ vertices, by joining the $i$th vertices of both paths with an edge for each $i\in\{ 1,\ldots,k\}$. In this paper, we show that for all positive integers $k$ and $d$,…

A classical result of Robertson and Seymour (1986) states that the treewidth of a graph is linearly tied to its separation number: the smallest integer $k$ such that, for every weighting of the vertices, the graph admits a balanced…

A cornerstone theorem in the Graph Minors series of Robertson and Seymour is the result that every graph $G$ with no minor isomorphic to a fixed graph $H$ has a certain structure. The structure can then be exploited to deduce far-reaching…

We show that problems which have finite integer index and satisfy a requirement we call treewidth-bounding admit linear kernels on the class of $H$-topological-minor free graphs, for an arbitrary fixed graph $H$. This builds on earlier…

The independence number of a tree decomposition is the size of a largest independent set contained in a single bag. The tree-independence number of a graph $G$ is the minimum independence number of a tree decomposition of $G$. As shown…

Unlike minors, the induced subgraph obstructions to bounded treewidth come in a large variety, including, for every $t\geq 1$, the $t$-basic obstructions: the graphs $K_{t+1}$ and $K_{t,t}$, along with the subdivisions of the $t$-by-$t$…

For an integer $k$, a $k$-tree is a tree with maximum degree at most $k$. More generally, if $f$ is an integer-valued function on vertices, an $f$-tree is a tree in which each vertex $v$ has degree at most $f(v)$. Let $c(G)$ denote the…

The local tree-width of a graph G=(V,E) is the function ltw^G: N -> N that associates with every natural number r the maximal tree-width of an r-neighborhood in G. Our main graph theoretic result is a decomposition theorem for graphs with…

We study the Independent Set (IS) problem in $H$-free graphs, i.e., graphs excluding some fixed graph $H$ as an induced subgraph. We prove several inapproximability results both for polynomial-time and parameterized algorithms.…

Treewidth is an important and well-known graph parameter that measures the complexity of a graph. The Kneser graph Kneser(n,k) is the graph with vertex set $\binom{[n]}{k}$, such that two vertices are adjacent if they are disjoint. We…

For a finite collection of graphs ${\cal F}$, the ${\cal F}$-M-DELETION problem consists in, given a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, deciding whether there exists $S \subseteq V(G)$ with $|S| \leq k$ such that $G \setminus S$ does not contain…

Subdividing an edge $uv$ in a graph replaces it by a path $u w v$ with one new vertex. For a graph $H$, the \textsc{$H$-free Subdivision} problem asks whether, given a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, one can destroy all induced copies of $H$…

For an integer $k$ at least $2$, and a graph $G$, let $f_k(G)$ be the minimum cardinality of a set $X$ of vertices of $G$ such that $G-X$ has either $k$ vertices of maximum degree or order less than $k$. Caro and Yuster (Discrete…

Let $n$, $k$ and $t$ be integers with $1\leq t< k \leq n$. The \emph{generalized Kneser graph} $K(n,k,t)$ is a graph whose vertices are the $k$-subsets of a fixed $n$-set, where two $k$-subsets $A$ and $B$ are adjacent if $|A\cap B|<t$. The…

We develop two different methods to achieve subexponential time parameterized algorithms for problems on sparse directed graphs. We exemplify our approaches with two well studied problems. For the first problem, {\sc $k$-Leaf…

Dumas, Foucaud, Perez and Todinca (2024) recently proved that every graph whose edges can be covered by $k$ shortest paths has pathwidth at most $O(3^k)$. In this paper, we improve this upper bound on the pathwidth to a polynomial one;…

We prove the following result about approximating the maximum independent set in a graph. Informally, we show that any approximation algorithm with a ``non-trivial'' approximation ratio (as a function of the number of vertices of the input…

The bandwidth theorem [Mathematische Annalen, 343(1):175--205, 2009] states that any $n$-vertex graph $G$ with minimum degree $\big(\tfrac{k-1}{k}+o(1)\big)n$ contains all $n$-vertex $k$-colourable graphs $H$ with bounded maximum degree and…

Branchwidth determines how graphs, and more generally, arbitrary connectivity (basically symmetric and submodular) functions could be decomposed into a tree-like structure by specific cuts. We develop a general framework for designing…

In the distributed subgraph-freeness problem, we are given a graph $H$, and asked to determine whether the network graph contains $H$ as a subgraph or not. Subgraph-freeness is an extremely local problem: if the network had no bandwidth…