KAIST Discrete Math Seminar

A set F of graphs has the Erdős-Posa property if there exists a function f such that every graph either contains k disjoint subgraphs each isomorphic to a member in F or contains a set of at most f(k) vertices intersecting all such subgraphs. In this talk I will address the Erdős-Posa property with respect to three closely related graph containment relations: minor, topological minor, and immersion. We denote the set of graphs containing H as a minor, topological minor and immersion by M(H),T(H) and I(H), respectively. Robertson and Seymour in 1980’s proved that M(H) has the Erdős-Posa property if and only if H is planar. And they left the question for characterizing H in which T(H) has the Erdős-Posa property in the same paper. This characterization is expected to be complicated as T(H) has no Erdős-Posa property even for some tree H. In this talk, I will present joint work with Postle and Wollan for providing such a characterization. For immersions, it is more reasonable to consider an edge-variant of the Erdős-Posa property: packing edge-disjoint subgraphs and covering them by edges. I(H) has no this edge-variant of the Erdős-Posa property even for some tree H. However, I will prove that I(H) has the edge-variant of the Erdős-Posa property for every graph H if the host graphs are restricted to be 4-edge-connected. The 4-edge-connectivity cannot be replaced by the 3-edge-connectivity.

Robertson and Seymour proved that graphs are well-quasi-ordered by the minor relation and the weak immersion relation. In other words, given infinitely many graphs, one graph contains another as a minor (or a weak immersion, respectively). Unlike the relation of minor and weak immersion, the topological minor relation does not well-quasi-order graphs in general. However, Robertson conjectured in the late 1980’s that for every positive integer k, the topological minor relation well-quasi-orders graphs that do not contain a topological minor isomorphic to the path of length k with each edge duplicated. We will sketch the idea of our recent proof of this conjecture. In addition, we will give a structure theorem for excluding a fixed graph as a topological minor. Such structure theorem were previously obtained by Grohe and Marx and by Dvorak, but we push one of the bounds in their theorems to the optimal value. This improvement is needed for our proof of Robertson’s conjecture. This work is joint with Robin Thomas.