English

A tight Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa function for planar minors

Combinatorics 2019-10-25 v5 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Let HH be a planar graph. By a classical result of Robertson and Seymour, there is a function f:NRf:\mathbb{N} \to \mathbb{R} such that for all kNk \in \mathbb{N} and all graphs GG, either GG contains kk vertex-disjoint subgraphs each containing HH as a minor, or there is a subset XX of at most f(k)f(k) vertices such that GXG-X has no HH-minor. We prove that this remains true with f(k)=cklogkf(k) = c k \log k for some constant c=c(H)c=c(H). This bound is best possible, up to the value of cc, and improves upon a recent result of Chekuri and Chuzhoy [STOC 2013], who established this with f(k)=cklogdkf(k) = c k \log^d k for some universal constant dd. The proof is constructive and yields a polynomial-time O(logOPT)O(\log \mathsf{OPT})-approximation algorithm for packing subgraphs containing an HH-minor.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.04969,
  title  = {A tight Erd\H{o}s-P\'osa function for planar minors},
  author = {Wouter Cames van Batenburg and Tony Huynh and Gwenaël Joret and Jean-Florent Raymond},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.04969},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:00:03.668Z