A family $\mathcal F$ of (di)graphs is said to have the half- or quarter-integral Erdős-Pósa property if, for any integer $k$ and any (di)graph $G$, there either exist $k$ copies of graphs in $\mathcal F$ within $G$ such that any vertex of $G$ is contained in at most 2, respectively at most 4, of these copies, or there exists a vertex set $A$ of size at most $f(k)$ such that $G - A$ contains no copies of graphs in $\mathcal F$. Very recently we showed that even dicycles have the quarter-integral Erdős-Pósa property [STOC'24] via the proof of a structure theorem for digraphs without large packings of even dicycles. In this talk we discuss our current effort to improve this approach towards the half-integral Erdős-Pósa property, which would be best possible, as even dicycles do not have the integral Erdős-Pósa property. Complementing the talk given by Sebastian Wiederrecht in this seminar regarding our initial result, we also shine a light on some of the particulars of the embedding we use in lieu of flatness and how this helps us to move even dicycles through the digraph. In the process of this, we highlight the parts of the proof that initially caused the result to be quarter-integral. (This is joint work with Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi, Stephan Kreutzer, and Sebastian Wiederrecht.)

We say that two functors Λ and Γ between thin categories of relational structures are adjoint if for all structures A and B, we have that Λ(A) maps homomorphically to B if and only if A maps homomorphically to Γ(B). If this is the case Λ is called the left adjoint to Γ and Γ the right adjoint to Λ. In 2015, Foniok and Tardif described some functors on the category of digraphs that allow both left and right adjoints. The main contribution of Foniok and Tardif is a construction of right adjoints to some of the functors identified as right adjoints by Pultr in 1970. We shall present several recent advances in this direction including a new approach based on the notion of Datalog Program borrowed from logic.

Delta-matroids are a generalization of matroids with connections to many parts of graph theory and combinatorics (such as matching theory and the structure of topological graph embeddings). Formally, a delta-matroid is a pair $D=(V,\mathcal F)$ where $\mathcal F$ is a collection of subsets of V known as "feasible sets." (They can be thought of as generalizing the set of bases of a matroid, while relaxing the condition that all bases must have the same cardinality.) Like with matroids, an important class of delta-matroids are linear delta-matroids, where the feasible sets are represented via a skew-symmetric matrix. Prominent examples of linear delta-matroids include linear matroids and matching delta-matroids (where the latter are represented via the famous Tutte matrix). However, the study of algorithms over delta-matroids seems to have been much less developed than over matroids. In this talk, we review recent results on representations of and algorithms over linear delta-matroids. We first focus on classical polynomial-time aspects. We present a new (equivalent) representation of linear delta-matroids that is more suitable for algorithmic purposes, and we show that so-called delta-sums and unions of linear delta-matroids are linear. As a result, we get faster (randomized) algorithms for Linear Delta-matroid Parity and Linear Delta-matroid Intersection, improving results from Geelen et al. (2004). We then move on to parameterized complexity aspects of linear delta-matroids. We find that many results regarding linear matroids which have had applications in FPT algorithms and kernelization directly generalize to linear delta-matroids of bounded rank. On the other hand, unlike with matroids, there is a significant difference between the "rank" and "cardinality" parameters - the structure of bounded-cardinality feasible sets in a delta-matroid of unbounded rank is significantly harder to deal with than feasible sets in a bounded-rank delta-matroid.

The positive discrepancy of a graph $G$ of edge density $p$ is defined as the maximum of $e(U) - p|U|(|U|-1)/2$, where the maximum is taken over subsets of vertices in G. In 1993 Alon proved that if G is a $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices and $d = O(n^{1/9})$, then the positive discrepancy of $G$ is at least $c d^{1/2}n$ for some constant $c$. We extend this result by proving lower bounds for the positive discrepancy with average degree d when $d < (1/2 - \epsilon)n$. We prove that the same lower bound remains true when $d < n^(2/3)$, while in the ranges $n^{2/3} < d < n^{4/5}$ and $n^{4/5} < d < (1/2 - \epsilon)n$ we prove that the positive discrepancy is at least $n^2/d$ and $d^{1/4}n/log(n)$ respectively. Our proofs are based on semidefinite programming and linear algebraic techniques. Our results are tight when $d < n^{3/4}$, thus demonstrating a change in the behaviour around $d = n^{2/3}$ when a random graph no longer minimises the positive discrepancy. As a by-product, we also present lower bounds for the second largest eigenvalue of a $d$-regular graph when $d < (1/2 - \epsilon)n$, thus extending the celebrated Alon-Boppana theorem. This is joint work with Benjamin Sudakov and István Tomon.

Bollobás proved that for every $k$ and $\ell$ such that $k\mathbb{Z}+\ell$ contains an even number, an $n$-vertex graph containing no cycle of length $\ell \bmod k$ can contain at most a linear number of edges. The precise (or asymptotic) value of the maximum number of edges in such a graph is known for very few pairs $\ell$ and $k$. We precisely determine the maximum number of edges in a graph containing no cycle of length $0 \bmod 4$. This is joint work with Ervin Győri, Binlong Li, Nika Salia, Kitti Varga and Manran Zhu.

Let $\mathcal{G}$ and $\mathcal{H}$ be minor-closed graphs classes. The class $\mathcal{H}$ has the Erdős-Pósa property in $\mathcal{G}$ if there is a function $f : \mathbb{N} \to \mathbb{N}$ such that every graph $G$ in $\mathcal{G}$ either contains (a packing of) $k$ disjoint copies of some subgraph minimal graph $H \not\in \mathcal{H}$ or contains (a covering of) $f(k)$ vertices, whose removal creates a graph in $\mathcal{H}$. A class $\mathcal{G}$ is a minimal EP-counterexample for $\mathcal{H}$ if $\mathcal{H}$ does not have the Erdős-Pósa property in $\mathcal{G}$, however it does have this property for every minor-closed graph class that is properly contained in $\mathcal{G}$. The set $\frak{C}_{\mathcal{H}}$ of the subset-minimal EP-counterexamples, for every $\mathcal{H}$, can be seen as a way to consider all possible Erdős-Pósa dualities that can be proven for minor-closed classes. We prove that, for every $\mathcal{H}$, $\frak{C}_{\mathcal{H}}$ is finite and we give a complete characterization of it. In particular, we prove that $|\frak{C}_{\mathcal{H}}| = 2^{\operatorname{poly}(\ell(h))}$, where $h$ is the maximum size of a minor-obstruction of $\mathcal{H}$ and $\ell(\cdot)$ is the unique linkage function. As a corollary of this, we obtain a constructive proof of Thomas' conjecture claiming that every minor-closed graph class has the half-integral Erdős-Pósa property in all graphs. This is joint work with Christophe Paul, Dimitrios Thilikos, and Sebastian Wiederrecht.

We prove a conjecture of Bonamy, Bousquet, Pilipczuk, Rzążewski, Thomassé, and Walczak, that for every graph $H$, there is a polynomial $p$ such that for every positive integer $s$, every graph of average degree at least $p(s)$ contains either $K_{s,s}$ as a subgraph or contains an induced subdivision of $H$. This improves upon a result of Kühn and Osthus from 2004 who proved it for graphs whose average degree is at least triply exponential in $s$ and a recent result of Du, Girão, Hunter, McCarty and Scott for graphs with average degree at least singly exponential in $s$. As an application, we prove that the class of graphs that do not contain an induced subdivision of $K_{s,t}$ is polynomially $\chi$-bounded. In the case of $K_{2,3}$, this is the class of theta-free graphs, and answers a question of Davies. Along the way, we also answer a recent question of McCarty, by showing that if $\mathcal{G}$ is a hereditary class of graphs for which there is a polynomial $p$ such that every bipartite $K_{s,s}$-free graph in $\mathcal{G}$ has average degree at most $p(s)$, then more generally, there is a polynomial $p'$ such that every $K_{s,s}$-free graph in $\mathcal{G}$ has average degree at most $p'(s)$. Our main new tool is an induced variant of the Kővári-Sós-Turán theorem, which we find to be of independent interest. This is joint work with Romain Bourneuf (ENS de Lyon), Matija Bucić (Princeton), and James Davies (Cambridge),