Search

This paper studies the structure of graphs with given tree-width and excluding a fixed complete bipartite subgraph, which generalises the bounded degree setting. We give a new structural description of such graphs in terms of so-called quasi-tree-partitions. We demonstrate the utility of this result through applications to (fractional) clustered colouring. Further generalisations of these structural and colouring results are presented.

Motivated by Hadwiger's conjecture and related problems for list-coloring, we study graphs $H$ for which every graph with minimum degree at least $|V(H)|-1$ contains $H$ as a minor. We prove that a large class of apex-outerplanar graphs satisfies this property. Our result gives the first examples of such graphs whose vertex cover numbers are significantly larger than half of the number of its vertices, which breaks a barrier for attacking related coloring problems via extremal functions, and recovers all known such graphs that have arbitrarily large maximum degree. Our proof can be adapted to directed graphs to show that if $\vec H$ is the digraph obtained from a directed cycle or an in-arborescence by adding an apex source, then every digraph with minimum out-degree $|V(\vec H)|-1$ contains $\vec H$ as a subdivision or a butterfly minor respectively. These results provide the optimal upper bound for the chromatic number and dichromatic number of graphs and digraphs that do not contain the aforementioned graphs or digraphs as a minor, butterfly minor and a subdivision, respectively. Special cases of our results solve an open problem of Aboulker, Cohen, Havet, Lochet, Moura and Thomass\'{e} and strengthen results of Gishboliner, Steiner and Szab\'{o}.

We introduce peaceful colourings, a variant of $h$-conflict free colourings. We call a colouring with no monochromatic edges $p$-peaceful if for each vertex $v$, there are at most $p$ neighbours of $v$ coloured with a colour appearing on another neighbour of $v$. An $h$-conflict-free colouring of a graph is a (vertex)-colouring with no monochromatic edges so that for every vertex $v$, the number of neighbours of $v$ which are coloured with a colour appearing on no other neighbour of $v$ is at least the minimum of $h$ and the degree of $v$. If $G$ is $\Delta$-regular then it has an $h$-conflict free colouring precisely if it has a $(\Delta-h)$-peaceful colouring. We focus on the minimum $p_\Delta$ of those $p$ for which every graph of maximum degree $\Delta$ has a $p$-peaceful colouring with $\Delta+1$ colours. We show that $p_\Delta > (1-\frac{1}{e}-o(1))\Delta$ and that for graphs of bounded codegree, $p_\Delta \leq (1-\frac{1}{e}+o(1))\Delta$. We ask if the latter result can be improved by dropping the bound on the codegree. As a partial result, we show that $p_\Delta \leq \frac{8000}{8001}\Delta$ for sufficiently large $\Delta$.

A proper conflict-free colouring of a graph is a colouring of the vertices such that any two adjacent vertices receive different colours, and for every non-isolated vertex $v$, some colour appears exactly once on the neighbourhood of $v$. Caro, Petru\v{s}evski and \v{S}krekovski conjectured that every connected graph with maximum degree $\Delta \geq 3$ has a proper conflict-free colouring with at most $\Delta+1$ colours. This conjecture holds for $\Delta=3$ and remains open for $\Delta \geq 4$. In this paper we prove that this conjecture holds asymptotically; namely, every graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ has a proper conflict-free colouring with $(1+o(1))\Delta$ colours.

Weak diameter coloring of graphs recently attracted attention partially due to its connection to asymptotic dimension of metric spaces. We consider weak diameter list-coloring of graphs in this paper. Dvo\v{r}\'{a}k and Norin proved that graphs with bounded Euler genus are 3-choosable with bounded weak diameter. In this paper, we extend their result by showing that for every graph $H$, $H$-minor free graphs are 3-choosable with bounded weak diameter. The upper bound 3 is optimal and it strengthens an earlier result for non-list-coloring $H$-minor free graphs with bounded weak diameter. As a corollary, $H$-minor free graphs with bounded maximum degree are 3-choosable with bounded clustering, strengthening an earlier result for non-list-coloring. When $H$ is planar, we prove a much stronger result: for every 2-list-assignment $L$ of an $H$-minor free graph, every precoloring with bounded weak diameter can be extended to an $L$-coloring with bounded weak diameter. As a corollary, for any planar graph $H$ and $H$-minor free graph $G$, there are exponentially many list-colorings of $G$ with bounded weak diameter (and with bounded clustering if $G$ also has bounded maximum degree); and every graph with bounded layered tree-width and bounded maximum degree has exponentially many 3-colorings with bounded clustering. We also show that the aforementioned results for list-coloring cannot be extended to odd minor free graphs by showing that some bipartite graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$ are $k$-choosable with bounded weak diameter only when $k=\Omega(\log\Delta/\log\log\Delta)$. On the other hand, we show that odd $H$-minor graphs are 3-colorable with bounded weak diameter, implying an earlier result about clustered coloring of odd $H$-minor free graphs with bounded maximum degree.

Assouad-Nagata dimension addresses both large and small scale behaviors of metric spaces and is a refinement of Gromov's asymptotic dimension. A metric space $M$ is a minor-closed metric if there exists an (edge-)weighted graph $G$ satisfying a fixed minor-closed property such that the underlying space of $M$ is the vertex-set of $G$, and the metric of $M$ is the distance function in $G$. Minor-closed metrics naturally arise when removing redundant edges of the underlying graphs by using edge-deletion and edge-contraction. In this paper, we determine the Assouad-Nagata dimension of every minor-closed metric. Our main theorem simultaneously generalizes known results about the asymptotic dimension of $H$-minor free unweighted graphs and about the Assouad-Nagata dimension of complete Riemannian surfaces with finite Euler genus.

A proper coloring of a graph is \emph{conflict-free} if, for every non-isolated vertex, some color is used exactly once on its neighborhood. Caro, Petru\v{s}evski, and \v{S}krekovski proved that every graph $G$ has a proper conflict-free coloring with at most $5\Delta(G)/2$ colors and conjectured that $\Delta(G)+1$ colors suffice for every connected graph $G$ with $\Delta(G)\ge 3$. Our first main result is that even for list-coloring, $\left\lceil 1.6550826\Delta(G)+\sqrt{\Delta(G)}\right\rceil$ colors suffice for every graph $G$ with $\Delta(G)\ge 10^{8}$; we also prove slightly weaker bounds for all graphs with $\Delta(G)\ge 750$. These results follow from our more general framework on proper conflict-free list-coloring of a pair consisting of a graph $G$ and a "conflict" hypergraph ${\mathcal H}$. As another corollary of our results in this general framework, every graph has a proper $(\sqrt{30}+o(1))\Delta(G)^{1.5}$-list-coloring such that every bi-chromatic component is a path on at most three vertices, where the number of colors is optimal up to a constant factor. Our proof uses a fairly new type of recursive counting argument called Rosenfeld counting, which is a variant of the Lov\'{a}sz Local Lemma or entropy compression. We also prove an asymptotically optimal result for a fractional analogue of our general framework for proper conflict-free coloring for pairs of a graph and a conflict hypergraph. A corollary states that every graph $G$ has a fractional $(1+o(1))\Delta(G)$-coloring such that every fractionally bi-chromatic component has at most two vertices. In particular, it implies that the fractional analogue of the conjecture of Caro et al.\ holds asymptotically in a strong sense.

The clustering of a graph coloring is the maximum size of monochromatic components. This paper studies colorings with bounded clustering in graph classes with bounded layered treewidth, which include planar graphs, graphs of bounded Euler genus, graphs embeddable on a fixed surface with a bounded number of crossings per edge, map graphs, amongst other examples. Our main theorem says that every graph with layered treewidth at most $k$ and with maximum degree at most $\Delta$ is $3$-colorable with clustering $O(k^{19}\Delta^{37})$. This is the first known polynomial bound on the clustering. This greatly improves upon a corresponding result of Esperet and Joret for graphs of bounded genus., Comment: This paper is extracted from arXiv:1905.08969. The corresponding part in arXiv:1905.08969 will be deleted

The defective chromatic number of a graph class is the infimum $k$ such that there exists an integer $d$ such that every graph in this class can be partitioned into at most $k$ induced subgraphs with maximum degree at most $d$. Finding the defective chromatic number is a fundamental graph partitioning problem and received attention recently partially due to Hadwiger's conjecture about coloring minor-closed families. In this paper, we prove that the defective chromatic number of any minor-closed family equals the simple lower bound obtained by the standard construction, confirming a conjecture of Ossona de Mendez, Oum, and Wood. This result provides the optimal list of unavoidable finite minors for infinite graphs that cannot be partitioned into a fixed finite number of induced subgraphs with uniformly bounded maximum degree. As corollaries about clustered coloring, we obtain a linear relation between the clustered chromatic number of any minor-closed family and the tree-depth of its forbidden minors, improving an earlier exponential bound proved by Norin, Scott, Seymour, and Wood and confirming the planar case of their conjecture.

Proper conflict-free coloring is an intermediate notion between proper coloring of a graph and proper coloring of its square. It is a proper coloring such that for every non-isolated vertex, there exists a color appearing exactly once in its (open) neighborhood. Typical examples of graphs with large proper conflict-free chromatic number include graphs with large chromatic number and bipartite graphs isomorphic to the $1$-subdivision of graphs with large chromatic number. In this paper, we prove two rough converse statements that hold even in the list-coloring setting. The first is for sparse graphs: for every graph $H$, there exists an integer $c_H$ such that every graph with no subdivision of $H$ is (properly) conflict-free $c_H$-choosable. The second applies to dense graphs: every graph with large conflict-free choice number either contains a large complete graph as an odd minor or contains a bipartite induced subgraph that has large conflict-free choice number. These give two incomparable (partial) answers of a question of Caro, Petru\v{s}evski and \v{S}krekovski. We also prove quantitatively better bounds for minor-closed families, implying some known results about proper conflict-free coloring and odd coloring in the literature. Moreover, we prove that every graph with layered treewidth at most $w$ is (properly) conflict-free $(8w-1)$-choosable. This result applies to $(g,k)$-planar graphs, which are graphs whose coloring problems have attracted attention recently., Comment: Hickingbotham recently independently announced a paper (arXiv:2203.10402) proving a result similar to the ones in this paper. Please see the notes at the end of this paper for details. v2: add results for odd minors, which applies to graphs with unbounded degeneracy, and change the title of the paper

For a fixed graph $H$ and for arbitrarily large host graphs $G$, the number of homomorphisms from $H$ to $G$ and the number of subgraphs isomorphic to $H$ contained in $G$ have been extensively studied in extremal graph theory and graph limits theory when the host graphs are allowed to be dense. This paper addresses the case when the host graphs are robustly sparse and proves a general theorem that solves a number of open questions proposed since 1990s and strengthens a number of results in the literature. We prove that for any graph $H$ and any set ${\mathcal H}$ of homomorphisms from $H$ to members of a hereditary class ${\mathcal G}$ of graphs, if ${\mathcal H}$ satisfies a natural and mild condition, and contracting disjoint subgraphs of radius $O(\lvert V(H) \rvert)$ in members of ${\mathcal G}$ cannot create a graph with large edge-density, then an obvious lower bound for the size of ${\mathcal H}$ gives a good estimation for the size of ${\mathcal H}$. This result determines the maximum number of $H$-homomorphisms, the maximum number of $H$-subgraphs, and the maximum number $H$-induced subgraphs in graphs in any hereditary class with bounded expansion up to a constant factor; it also determines the exact value of the asymptotic logarithmic density for $H$-homomorphisms, $H$-subgraphs and $H$-induced subgraphs in graphs in any hereditary nowhere dense class. Hereditary classes with bounded expansion include (topological) minor-closed families and many classes of graphs with certain geometric properties; nowhere dense classes are the most general sparse classes in sparsity theory. Our machinery also allows us to determine the maximum number of $H$-subgraphs in the class of all $d$-degenerate graphs with any fixed $d$.

The asymptotic dimension is an invariant of metric spaces introduced by Gromov in the context of geometric group theory. In this paper, we study the asymptotic dimension of metric spaces generated by graphs and their shortest path metric and show their applications to some continuous spaces. The asymptotic dimension of such graph metrics can be seen as a large scale generalisation of weak diameter network decomposition which has been extensively studied in computer science. We prove that every proper minor-closed family of graphs has asymptotic dimension at most 2, which gives optimal answers to a question of Fujiwara and Papasoglu and (in a strong form) to a problem raised by Ostrovskii and Rosenthal on minor excluded groups. For some special minor-closed families, such as the class of graphs embeddable in a surface of bounded Euler genus, we prove a stronger result and apply this to show that complete Riemannian surfaces have Assouad-Nagata dimension at most 2. Furthermore, our techniques allow us to prove optimal results for the asymptotic dimension of graphs of bounded layered treewidth and graphs of polynomial growth, which are graph classes that are defined by purely combinatorial notions and properly contain graph classes with some natural topological and geometric flavours., Comment: This paper is essentially a combination of arXiv:2007.03582 and the non-algorithmic part of arXiv:2007.08771, where some results in arXiv:2007.03582 are strengthened. v2: fix the authors names. v3: update based on referees' comments, improve the bound for layered treewidth in Theorem 1.12 from 12 to 1, and simplify the proof without the use of fat bananas

Nash-Williams' Strong Immersion Conjecture states that graphs are well-quasi-ordered by the strong immersion relation. That is, given infinitely many graphs, one graph contains another graph as a strong immersion. In this paper we study the analogous problem for directed graphs. It is known that digraphs are not well-quasi-ordered by the strong immersion relation, but for all known such infinite antichains, paths that change direction arbitrarily many times can be found. This paper proves that the converse statement is true: for every positive integer $k$, the digraphs that do not contain a path that changes direction $k$ times are well-quasi-ordered by the strong immersion relation, even when vertices are labelled by a well-quasi-order. This result is optimal for classes of digraphs closed under taking subgraphs since paths that change direction arbitrarily many times with vertex-labels form an infinite antichain with respect to the strong immersion relation.

The asymptotic dimension of metric spaces is an important notion in geometric group theory introduced by Gromov. The metric spaces considered in this paper are the ones whose underlying spaces are the vertex-sets of graphs and whose metrics are the distance functions in graphs. A standard compactness argument shows that it suffices to consider the asymptotic dimension of classes of finite graphs. In this paper we prove that the asymptotic dimension of any proper minor-closed family, any class of graphs of bounded tree-width, and any class of graphs of bounded layered tree-width are at most 2, 1, and 2, respectively. The first result solves a question of Fujiwara and Papasoglu; the second and third results solve a number of questions of Bonamy, Bousquet, Esperet, Groenland, Pirot and Scott. These bounds for asymptotic dimension are optimal and improve a number of results in the literature. Our proofs can be transformed into linear or quadratic time algorithms for finding coverings witnessing the asymptotic dimension which is equivalent to finding weak diameter colorings for graphs. The key ingredient of our proof is a unified machinery about the asymptotic dimension of classes of graphs that have tree-decompositions of bounded adhesion over hereditary classes with known asymptotic dimension, which might be of independent interest.

Hadwiger and Haj\'{o}s conjectured that for every positive integer $t$, $K_{t+1}$-minor free graphs and $K_{t+1}$-topological minor free graphs are properly $t$-colorable, respectively. Clustered coloring version of these two conjectures which only require monochromatic components to have bounded size has been extensively studied. In this paper we consider the clustered coloring version of the immersion-variant of Hadwiger's and Haj\'{o}s' conjecture proposed by Lescure and Meyniel and independently by Abu-Khzam and Langston. We determine the minimum number of required colors for $H$-immersion free graphs, for any fixed graph $H$, up to a small additive absolute constant. Our result is tight for infinitely many graphs $H$. A key machinery developed in this paper is a lemma that reduces a clustering coloring problem on graphs to the one on the torsos of their tree-cut decomposition or tree-decomposition. A byproduct of this machinery is a unified proof of a result of Alon, Ding, Oporowski and Vertigan and a result of the author and Oum about clustered coloring graphs of bounded maximum degree in minor-closed families.

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 $G$ contains $H$ as an immersion, then for every integer $k$, the number of vertices of degree at least $k$ in $G$ is at least the number of vertices of degree at least $k$ in $H$. In this paper, we prove that this obvious necessary condition is "nearly" sufficient for graphs with no edge-cut of order 3: for every graph $H$, every $H$-immersion free graph with no edge-cut of order 3 can be obtained by an edge-sum of graphs, where each of the summands is obtained from a graph violating the obvious degree condition by adding a bounded number of edges. The condition for having no edge-cut of order 3 is necessary. A simple application of this theorem shows that for every graph $H$ of maximum degree $d \geq 4$, there exists an integer $c$ such that for every positive integer $m$, there are at most $c^m$ unlabelled $d$-edge-connected $H$-immersion free $m$-edge graphs with no isolated vertex, while there are superexponentially many unlabelled $(d-1)$-edge-connected $H$-immersion free $m$-edge graphs with no isolated vertex. Our structure theorem will be applied in a forthcoming paper about determining the clustered chromatic number of the class of $H$-immersion free graphs.

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 infinite antichains with respect to the topological containment, subdivisions of a graph obtained from an arbitrarily long path by duplicating each edge can be found. In the 1980's Robertson conjectured that this is the only obstruction. Formally, he conjectured that for every positive integer $k$, graphs that do not contain the graph obtained from a path of length $k$ by duplicating each edge as a topological minor are well-quasi-ordered by the topological minor relation. The case $k=1$ implies Kruskal's Tree Theorem, and the case $k=2$ implies a conjecture of V\'{a}zsonyi on subcubic graphs. This series of papers dedicates a proof of Robertson's conjecture. We prove Robertson's conjecture for graphs of bounded tree-width in this paper. It is an essential step toward the complete proof of Robertson's conjecture, and the machinery developed in this paper will be applied in future papers of the series. This bounded tree-width case proved in this paper implies all known results about well-quasi-ordering graphs by the topological minor relation that can be proved without using the Graph Minor Theorem, and our proof in this paper is self-contained.

It was recently proved that every planar graph is a subgraph of the strong product of a path and a graph with bounded treewidth. This paper surveys generalisations of this result for graphs on surfaces, minor-closed classes, various non-minor-closed classes, and graph classes with polynomial growth. We then explore how graph product structure might be applicable to more broadly defined graph classes. In particular, we characterise when a graph class defined by a cartesian or strong product has bounded or polynomial expansion. We then explore graph product structure theorems for various geometrically defined graph classes, and present several open problems., Comment: 19 pages, 0 figures

Given an infinite family ${\mathcal G}$ of graphs and a monotone property ${\mathcal P}$, an (upper) threshold for ${\mathcal G}$ and ${\mathcal P}$ is a "fastest growing" function $p: \mathbb{N} \to [0,1]$ such that $\lim_{n \to \infty} \Pr(G_n(p(n)) \in {\mathcal P})= 1$ for any sequence $(G_n)_{n \in \mathbb{N}}$ over ${\mathcal G}$ with $\lim_{n \to \infty}\lvert V(G_n) \rvert = \infty$, where $G_n(p(n))$ is the random subgraph of $G_n$ such that each edge remains independently with probability $p(n)$. In this paper we study the upper threshold for the family of $H$-minor free graphs and for the graph property of being $(r-1)$-degenerate, which is one fundamental graph property with many applications. Even a constant factor approximation for the upper threshold for all pairs $(r,H)$ is expected to be very difficult by its close connection to a major open question in extremal graph theory. We determine asymptotically the thresholds (up to a constant factor) for being $(r-1)$-degenerate for a large class of pairs $(r,H)$, including all graphs $H$ of minimum degree at least $r$ and all graphs $H$ with no vertex-cover of size at most $r$, and provide lower bounds for the rest of the pairs of $(r,H)$. The results generalize to arbitrary proper minor-closed families and the properties of being $r$-colorable, being $r$-choosable, or containing an $r$-regular subgraph, respectively.

Haj\'os conjectured that every graph containing no subdivision of the complete graph $K_{s+1}$ is properly $s$-colorable. This conjecture was disproved by Catlin. Indeed, the maximum chromatic number of such graphs is $\Omega(s^2/\log s)$. We prove that $O(s)$ colors are enough for a weakening of this conjecture that only requires every monochromatic component to have bounded size (so-called clustered coloring). Our approach leads to more results. Say that a graph is an almost $(\leq 1)$-subdivision of a graph $H$ if it can be obtained from $H$ by subdividing edges, where at most one edge is subdivided more than once. Note that every graph with no $H$-subdivision does not contain an almost $(\leq 1)$-subdivision of $H$. We prove the following (where $s \geq 2$): (1) Graphs of bounded treewidth and with no almost $(\leq 1)$-subdivision of $K_{s+1}$ are $s$-choosable with bounded clustering. (2) For every graph $H$, graphs with no $H$-minor and no almost $(\leq 1)$-subdivision of $K_{s+1}$ are $(s+1)$-colorable with bounded clustering. (3) For every graph $H$ of maximum degree at most $d$, graphs with no $H$-subdivision and no almost $(\leq 1)$-subdivision of $K_{s+1}$ are $\max\{s+3d-5,2\}$-colorable with bounded clustering. (4) For every graph $H$ of maximum degree $d$, graphs with no $K_{s,t}$ subgraph and no $H$-subdivision are $\max\{s+3d-4,2\}$-colorable with bounded clustering. (5) Graphs with no $K_{s+1}$-subdivision are $(4s-5)$-colorable with bounded clustering. The first result shows that the weakening of Haj\'{o}s' conjecture is true for graphs of bounded treewidth in a stronger sense; the final result is the first $O(s)$ bound on the clustered chromatic number of graphs with no $K_{s+1}$-subdivision., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1905.09495

A graph coloring has bounded clustering if each monochromatic component has bounded size. Equivalently, it is a partition of the vertices into induced subgraphs with bounded size components. This paper studies clustered colorings of graphs, where the number of colors depends on an excluded minor and/or an excluded subgraph. We prove the following results (for fixed integers $s,t$ and a fixed graph $H$). First we show that graphs with no $K_{s,t}$ subgraph and with no $H$-minor are $(s+2)$-colorable with bounded clustering. The number of colors here is best possible. This result implies that graphs with no $K_{s+1}$-minor are $(s+2)$-colorable with bounded clustering, which is within two colors of the clustered coloring version of Hadwiger's conjecture. For graphs of bounded treewidth (or equivalently, excluding a planar minor) and with no $K_{s,t}$ subgraph, we prove $(s+1)$-choosability with bounded clustering, which is best possible. We then consider excluding an odd minor. We prove that graphs with no $K_{s,t}$ subgraph and with no odd $H$-minor are $(2s+1)$-colorable with bounded clustering, generalizing a result of the first author and Oum who proved the case $s=1$. Moreover, at least $s-1$ color classes are stable sets. Finally, we consider the clustered coloring version of a conjecture of Gerards and Seymour and prove that graphs with no odd $K_{s+1}$-minor are $(8s-4)$-colorable with bounded clustering, which improves on previous such bounds.

A graph coloring has bounded clustering if each monochromatic component has bounded size. This paper studies such a coloring, where the number of colors depends on an excluded complete bipartite subgraph. This is a much weaker assumption than previous works, where typically the number of colors depends on an excluded minor. This paper focuses on graph classes with bounded layered treewidth, which include planar graphs, graphs of bounded Euler genus, graphs embeddable on a fixed surface with a bounded number of crossings per edge, amongst other examples. Our main theorem says that for fixed integers $s,t,k$, every graph with layered treewidth at most $k$ and with no $K_{s,t}$ subgraph is $(s+2)$-colorable with bounded clustering. The $s=3$ case implies that every graph with a drawing on a fixed surface with a bounded number of crossings per edge is 5-colorable with bounded clustering. Our main theorem is also a critical component in two companion papers that study clustered coloring of graphs with no $K_{s,t}$ subgraph and excluding a fixed minor, odd minor or topological minor., Comment: The special case for graphs with bounded maximum degree in earlier versions of this paper has been extracted to an individual paper (arXiv:2209.12327) and deleted from this paper

In this paper, we prove a tight minimum degree condition in general graphs for the existence of paths between two given endpoints, whose lengths form a long arithmetic progression with common difference one or two. This allows us to obtain a number of exact and optimal results on cycle lengths in graphs of given minimum degree, connectivity or chromatic number. More precisely, we prove the following statements by a unified approach. (1) Every graph $G$ with minimum degree at least $k+1$ contains cycles of all even lengths modulo $k$; in addition, if $G$ is 2-connected and non-bipartite, then it contains cycles of all lengths modulo $k$. (2) For all $k\geq 3$, every $k$-connected graph contains a cycle of length zero modulo $k$. (3) Every 3-connected non-bipartite graph with minimum degree at least $k+1$ contains $k$ cycles of consecutive lengths. (4) Every graph with chromatic number at least $k+2$ contains $k$ cycles of consecutive lengths. The first statement is a conjecture of Thomassen, the second is a conjecture of Dean, the third is a tight answer to a question of Bondy and Vince, and the fourth is a conjecture of Sudakov and Verstra\"ete. All of the above results are best possible.

For nonnegative integers $k, d_1, \ldots, d_k$, a graph is $(d_1, \ldots, d_k)$-colorable if its vertex set can be partitioned into $k$ parts so that the $i$th part induces a graph with maximum degree at most $d_i$ for all $i\in\{1, \ldots, k\}$. A class $\mathcal C$ of graphs is {\it balanced $k$-partitionable} and {\it unbalanced $k$-partitionable} if there exists a nonnegative integer $D$ such that all graphs in $\mathcal C$ are $(D, \ldots, D)$-colorable and $(0, \ldots, 0, D)$-colorable, respectively, where the tuple has length $k$. A set $X$ of cycles is a {\it cycle obstruction set} of a class $\mathcal C$ of planar graphs if every planar graph containing none of the cycles in $X$ as a subgraph belongs to $\mathcal C$. This paper characterizes all cycle obstruction sets of planar graphs to be balanced $k$-partitionable and unbalanced $k$-partitionable for all $k$; namely, we identify all inclusion-wise minimal cycle obstruction sets for all $k$., Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures

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 other. Robertson and Seymour proved that when packing and covering $H$-minors for any fixed graph $H$, the planarity of $H$ is equivalent to the Erd\H{o}s-P\'{o}sa property. Thomas conjectured that the planarity is no longer required if the solution of the packing problem is allowed to be half-integral. In this paper, we prove that this half-integral version of Erd\H{o}s-P\'{o}sa property holds for packing and covering $H$-topological minors, for any fixed graph $H$, which easily implies Thomas' conjecture. In fact, we prove an even stronger statement in which those topological minors are rooted at any choice of prescribed subsets of vertices. A number of results on $H$-topological minor free or $H$-minor free graphs have conclusions or requirements tied to properties of $H$. Classes of graphs that can half-integrally pack only a bounded number of $H$-topological minors or $H$-minors are more general topological minor-closed or minor-closed families whose minimal obstructions are more complicated than $H$. Our theorem provides a general machinery to extend those results to those more general classes of graphs without losing their tight connections to $H$.

We show that triangle-free graphs that do not contain an induced subgraph isomorphic to a subdivision of K4 are 3-colorable. This proves a conjecture of Trotignon and Vuskovic.

A feedback vertex set of a graph is a subset of vertices intersecting all cycles. We provide tight upper bounds on the size of a minimum feedback vertex set in planar graphs of girth at least five. We prove that if $G$ is a connected planar graph of girth at least five on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, then $G$ has a feedback vertex set of size at most $\frac{2m-n+2}{7}$. By Euler's formula, this implies that $G$ has a feedback vertex set of size at most $\frac{m}{5}$ and $\frac{n-2}{3}$. These results not only improve a result of Dross, Montassier and Pinlou and confirm the girth-5 case of one of their conjectures, but also make the best known progress towards a conjecture of Kowalik, Lu\v{z}ar and \v{S}krekovski and solves the subcubic case of their conjecture. An important step of our proof is providing an upper bound on the size of minimum feedback vertex sets of subcubic graphs with girth at least five with no induced subdivision of members of a finite family of non-planar graphs., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1603.03855

In this paper, we address the maximum number of vertices of induced forests in subcubic graphs with girth at least four or five. We provide a unified approach to prove that every 2-connected subcubic graph on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges with girth at least four or five, respectively, has an induced forest on at least $n-\frac{2}{9}m$ or $n-\frac{1}{5}m$ vertices, respectively, except for finitely many exceptional graphs. Our results improve a result of Liu and Zhao and are tight in the sense that the bounds are attained by infinitely many 2-connected graphs. Equivalently, we prove that such graphs admit feedback vertex sets with size at most $\frac{2}{9}m$ or $\frac{1}{5}m$, respectively. Those exceptional graphs will be explicitly constructed, and our result can be easily modified to drop the 2-connectivity requirement.

There has been extensive research on cycle lengths in graphs with large minimum degree. In this paper, we obtain several new and tight results in this area. Let $G$ be a graph with minimum degree at least $k+1$. We prove that if $G$ is bipartite, then there are $k$ cycles in $G$ whose lengths form an arithmetic progression with common difference two. For general graph $G$, we show that $G$ contains $\lfloor k/2\rfloor$ cycles with consecutive even lengths and $k-3$ cycles whose lengths form an arithmetic progression with common difference one or two. In addition, if $G$ is 2-connected and non-bipartite, then $G$ contains $\lfloor k/2\rfloor$ cycles with consecutive odd lengths. Thomassen (1983) made two conjectures on cycle lengths modulo a fixed integer $k$: (1) every graph with minimum degree at least $k+1$ contains cycles of all even lengths modulo $k$; (2) every 2-connected non-bipartite graph with minimum degree at least $k+1$ contains cycles of all lengths modulo $k$. These two conjectures, if true, are best possible. Our results confirm both conjectures when $k$ is even. And when $k$ is odd, we show that minimum degree at least $k+4$ suffices. This improves all previous results in this direction. Moreover, our results derive new upper bounds of the chromatic number in terms of the longest sequence of cycles with consecutive (even or odd) lengths.

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. In this paper, we prove an edge-variant of the Erd\H{o}s-P\'{o}sa property with respect to the immersion containment in 4-edge-connected graphs. More precisely, we prove that for every graph $H$, there exists a function $f$ such that for every 4-edge-connected graph $G$, either $G$ contains $k$ pairwise edge-disjoint subgraphs each containing $H$ as an immersion, or there exists a set of at most $f(k)$ edges of $G$ intersecting all such subgraphs. This theorem is best possible in the sense that the 4-edge-connectivity cannot be replaced by the 3-edge-connectivity.

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 larger than a function of~$H$ and the maximum degree of~$G$. This improves a previous result of Alon, Ding, Oporowski and Vertigan~(2003) stating that $V(G)$ can be partitioned into four such sets if $G$ has no $H$ minor. Our theorem generalizes a result of Esperet and Joret~(2014), who proved it for graphs embeddable on a fixed surface and asked whether it is true for graphs with no $H$ minor. As a corollary, we prove that for every positive integer $t$, if a graph $G$ has no $K_{t+1}$ minor, then its vertex set $V(G)$ can be partitioned into $3t$ sets $X_1,\ldots,X_{3t}$ such that for each~$i$, the subgraph induced on $X_i$ has no component of size larger than a function of~$t$. This corollary improves a result of Wood~(2010), which states that $V(G)$ can be partitioned into $\lceil 3.5t+2\rceil$ such sets.

We prove that if G is a 4-critical graph of girth at least five then |E(G)|>=(5|V(G)|+2)/3. As a corollary, graphs of girth at least five embeddable in the Klein bottle or torus are 3-colorable. These are results of Thomas and Walls, and Thomassen respectively. The proof uses the new potential technique developed by Kostochka and Yancey who proved that 4-critical graphs satisfy: |E(G)|>=(5|V(G)|-2)/3., Comment: 17 pages

Let $H$ be a fixed graph. What can be said about graphs $G$ that have no subgraph isomorphic to a subdivision of $H$? Grohe and Marx proved that such graphs $G$ satisfy a certain structure theorem that is not satisfied by graphs that contain a subdivision of a (larger) graph $H_1$. Dvo\v{r}\'ak found a clever strengthening---his structure is not satisfied by graphs that contain a subdivision of a graph $H_2$, where $H_2$ has "similar embedding properties" as $H$. Building upon Dvo\v{r}\'ak's theorem, we prove that said graphs $G$ satisfy a similar structure theorem. Our structure is not satisfied by graphs that contain a subdivision of a graph $H_3$ that has similar embedding properties as $H$ and has the same maximum degree as $H$. This will be important in a forthcoming application to well-quasi-ordering.

An edge Roman dominating function of a graph $G$ is a function $f\colon E(G) \rightarrow \{0,1,2\}$ satisfying the condition that every edge $e$ with $f(e)=0$ is adjacent to some edge $e'$ with $f(e')=2$. The edge Roman domination number of $G$, denoted by $\gamma'_R(G)$, is the minimum weight $w(f) = \sum_{e\in E(G)} f(e)$ of an edge Roman dominating function $f$ of $G$. This paper disproves a conjecture of Akbari, Ehsani, Ghajar, Jalaly Khalilabadi and Sadeghian Sadeghabad stating that if $G$ is a graph of maximum degree $\Delta$ on $n$ vertices, then $\gamma_R'(G) \le \lceil \frac{\Delta}{\Delta+1} n \rceil$. While the counterexamples having the edge Roman domination numbers $\frac{2\Delta-2}{2\Delta-1} n$, we prove that $\frac{2\Delta-2}{2\Delta-1} n + \frac{2}{2\Delta-1}$ is an upper bound for connected graphs. Furthermore, we provide an upper bound for the edge Roman domination number of $k$-degenerate graphs, which generalizes results of Akbari, Ehsani, Ghajar, Jalaly Khalilabadi and Sadeghian Sadeghabad. We also prove a sharp upper bound for subcubic graphs. In addition, we prove that the edge Roman domination numbers of planar graphs on $n$ vertices is at most $\frac{6}{7}n$, which confirms a conjecture of Akbari and Qajar. We also show an upper bound for graphs of girth at least five that is 2-cell embeddable in surfaces of small genus. Finally, we prove an upper bound for graphs that do not contain $K_{2,3}$ as a subdivision, which generalizes a result of Akbari and Qajar on outerplanar graphs.

Let $G$ be a graph of minimum degree at least two with no induced subgraph isomorphic to $K_{1,6}$. We prove that if $G$ is not isomorphic to one of eight exceptional graphs, then it is possible to assign two-element subsets of $\{1,2,3,4,5\}$ to the vertices of $G$ in such a way that for every $i\in\{1,2,3,4,5\}$ and every vertex $v\in V(G)$ the label $i$ is assigned to $v$ or one of its neighbors. It follows that $G$ has fractional domatic number at least $5/2$. This is motivated by a problem in robotics and generalizes a result of Fujita, Yamashita and Kameda who proved that the same conclusion holds for all $3$-regular graphs.

An $(a:b)$-coloring of a graph $G$ is a function $f$ which maps the vertices of $G$ into $b$-element subsets of some set of size $a$ in such a way that $f(u)$ is disjoint from $f(v)$ for every two adjacent vertices $u$ and $v$ in $G$. The fractional chromatic number $\chi_f(G)$ is the infimum of $a/b$ over all pairs of positive integers $a,b$ such that $G$ has an $(a:b)$-coloring. Heckman and Thomas conjectured that the fractional chromatic number of every triangle-free graph $G$ of maximum degree at most three is at most 2.8. Hatami and Zhu proved that $\chi_f(G) \leq 3-3/64 \approx 2.953$. Lu and Peng improved the bound to $\chi_f(G) \leq 3-3/43 \approx 2.930$. Recently, Ferguson, Kaiser and Kr\'{a}l' proved that $\chi_f(G) \leq 32/11 \approx 2.909$. In this paper, we prove that $\chi_f(G) \leq 43/15 \approx 2.867$.

A linear coloring of a graph is a proper coloring of the vertices of the graph so that each pair of color classes induce a union of disjoint paths. In this paper, we prove that for every connected graph with maximum degree at most three and every assignment of lists of size four to the vertices of the graph, there exists a linear coloring such that the color of each vertex belongs to the list assigned to that vertex and the neighbors of every degree-two vertex receive different colors, unless the graph is $C_5$ or $K_{3,3}$. This confirms a conjecture raised by Esperet, Montassier, and Raspaud. Our proof is constructive and yields a linear-time algorithm to find such a coloring.

We show that any n-vertex complete graph with edges colored with three colors contains a set of at most four vertices such that the number of the neighbors of these vertices in one of the colors is at least 2n/3. The previous best value, proved by Erdos, Faudree, Gould, Gy\'arf\'as, Rousseau and Schelp in 1989, is 22. It is conjectured that three vertices suffice.