Grid Theorem Research Articles

Halin’s end degree conjecture

An end of a graph G is an equivalence class of rays, where two rays are equivalent if there are infinitely many vertex-disjoint paths between them in G. The degree of an end is the maximum cardinality of a collection of pairwise disjoint rays in this equivalence class. Halin conjectured that the end degree can be characterised in terms of certain typical ray configurations, which would generalise his famous grid theorem. In particular, every end of regular uncountable degree κ would contain a star of rays, i.e., a configuration consisting of a central ray R and κ neighbouring rays (Ri: i < κ) all disjoint from each other and each Ri sending a family of infinitely many disjoint paths to R so that paths from distinct families only meet in R. We show that Halin’s conjecture fails for end degree 1א, holds for $${\aleph _2},{\aleph _3}, \ldots ,{\aleph _\omega}$$ fails for אω+1, and is undecidable (in ZFC) for the next אω+n with n ∈ ℕ, n ≽ 2. Further results include a complete solution for all cardinals under GCH, complemented by a number of consistency results.

Adapting the Directed Grid Theorem into an FPT Algorithm

The Grid Theorem of Robertson and Seymour [JCTB, 1986], is one of the most important tools in the field of structural graph theory, finding numerous applications in the design of algorithms for undirected graphs. An analogous version of the Grid Theorem in digraphs was conjectured by Johnson et al. [JCTB, 2001], and proved by Kawarabayashi and Kreutzer [STOC, 2015]. Namely, they showed that there is a function $f(k)$ such that every digraph of directed tree-width at least $f(k)$ contains a cylindrical grid of size $k$ as a butterfly minor and stated that their proof can be turned into an XP algorithm, with parameter $k$, that either constructs a decomposition of the appropriate width, or finds the claimed large cylindrical grid as a butterfly minor. In this paper, we adapt some of the steps of the proof of Kawarabayashi and Kreutzer to improve this XP algorithm into an FPT algorithm. Towards this, our main technical contributions are two FPT algorithms with parameter $k$. The first one either produces an arboreal decomposition of width $3k-2$ or finds a haven of order $k$ in a digraph $D$, improving on the original result for arboreal decompositions by Johnson et al. The second algorithm finds a well-linked set of order $k$ in a digraph $D$ of large directed tree-width. As tools to prove these results, we show how to solve a generalized version of the problem of finding balanced separators for a given set of vertices $T$ in FPT time with parameter $|T|$, a result that we consider to be of its own interest.

A strengthening of Halin's grid theorem

We show that for every infinite collection R $\mathcal {R}$ of disjoint equivalent rays in a graph G there is a subdivision of the hexagonal half-grid in G such that all its vertical rays belong to R $\mathcal {R}$ . This result strengthens Halin's grid theorem by giving control over which specific set of rays is used, while its proof is significantly shorter.

Constant Congestion Brambles in Directed Graphs

The Directed Grid Theorem, stating that there is a function $f$ such that a directed graphs of directed treewidth at least $f(k)$ contains a directed grid of size at least $k$ as a butterfly minor, after being a conjecture for nearly 20 years, has been proven in 2015 by Kawarabayashi and Kreutzer. However, the function $f$ obtained in the proof is very fast growing. In this work, we show that if one relaxes directed grid to bramble of constant congestion, one can obtain a polynomial bound. More precisely, we show that for every $k \geq 1$ there exists $t = \mathcal{O}(k^{48} \log^{13} k)$ such that every directed graph of directed treewidth at least $t$ contains a bramble of congestion at most $8$ and size at least $k$.

On the tree-width of even-hole-free graphs

The class of all even-hole-free graphs has unbounded tree-width, as it contains all complete graphs. Recently, a class of (even-hole, K4)-free graphs was constructed, that still has unbounded tree-width (Sintiari and Trotignon, 2019). The class has unbounded degree and contains arbitrarily large clique-minors. We ask whether this is necessary.We prove that for every graph G, if G excludes a fixed graph H as a minor, then G either has small tree-width, or G contains a large wall or the line graph of a large wall as induced subgraph. This can be seen as a strengthening of Robertson and Seymour’s excluded grid theorem for the case of minor-free graphs. Our theorem implies that every class of even-hole-free graphs excluding a fixed graph as a minor has bounded tree-width. In fact, our theorem applies to a more general class: (theta, prism)-free graphs. This implies the known result that planar even hole-free graphs have bounded tree-width (Silva et al., 2010).We conjecture that even-hole-free graphs of bounded degree have bounded tree-width. If true, this would mean that even-hole-freeness is testable in the bounded-degree graph model of property testing. We prove the conjecture for subcubic graphs and we give a bound on the tree-width of the class of (even hole, pyramid)-free graphs of degree at most 4.

On Tseitin Formulas, Read-Once Branching Programs and Treewidth

We show that any nondeterministic read-once branching program that decides a satisfiable Tseitin formula based on an n × n grid graph has size at least 2Ω(n). Then using the Excluded Grid Theorem by Robertson and Seymour we show that for an arbitrary graph G(V, E) any nondeterministic read-once branching program that computes a satisfiable Tseitin formula based on G has size at least $2^{\Omega (\text {tw}(G)^{\delta })}$ for all δ < 1/36, where tw(G) is the treewidth of G (for planar graphs and some other classes of graphs the statement holds for δ = 1). We apply the mentioned results to the analysis of the complexity of derivations in the proof system OBDD(∧,reordering) and show that any OBDD(∧,reordering)-refutation of an unsatisfiable Tseitin formula based on a graph G has size at least $2^{\Omega (\text {tw}(G)^{\delta })}$ . We also show an upper bound O(|E|2pw(G)) on the size of OBDD representations of a satisfiable Tseitin formula based on G and an upper bound $O(|E||V| 2^{\text {pw}(G)}+|\text {TS}_{G,c}|^{2})$ on the size of OBDD(∧)-refutation of an unsatisifable Tseitin formula TSG, c, where pw(G) is the pathwidth of G.

Towards tight(er) bounds for the Excluded Grid Theorem

We study the Excluded Grid Theorem, a fundamental structural result in graph theory, that was proved by Robertson and Seymour in their seminal work on graph minors. The theorem states that there is a function f:Z+→Z+, such that for every integer g>0, every graph of treewidth at least f(g) contains the (g×g)-grid as a minor. For every integer g>0, let f(g) be the smallest value for which the theorem holds. Establishing tight bounds on f(g) is an important graph-theoretic question. Robertson and Seymour showed that f(g)=Ω(g2log⁡g) must hold. For a long time, the best known upper bounds on f(g) were super-exponential in g. The first polynomial upper bound of f(g)=O(g98polylog⁡g) was proved by Chekuri and Chuzhoy. It was later improved to f(g)=O(g36polylog⁡g), and then to f(g)=O(g19polylog⁡g). In this paper we further improve this bound to f(g)=O(g9polylog⁡g). We believe that our proof is significantly simpler than the proofs of the previous bounds. Moreover, while there are natural barriers that seem to prevent previous methods from yielding tight bounds for the theorem, it seems conceivable that the techniques proposed in this paper can lead to even tighter bounds on f(g).

Adapting The Directed Grid Theorem into an FPT Algorithm

Originally proved in 1986 by Robertson and Seymour, the Grid Theorem is one of the most important tools in the field of structural graph theory, finding numerous applications in the design of algorithms for undirected graphs. An analogous version of the Grid Theorem isn directed graphs was conjectured by Johnson et al. in 2001, and proved recently by Kawarabayashi and Kreutzer in 2015. Namely, they showed that there is a function f(k) such that every directed graph of directed tree-width at least f(k) contains a cylindrical grid of size k as a butterfly minor. Moreover, they claim that their proof can be turned into an XP algorithm, with parameter k, that either constructs a decomposition of the appropriate width, or finds the claimed large cylindrical grid as a butterfly minor. In this article, we adapt some of the steps of the proof of Kawarabayashi and Kreutzer and we improve the XP algorithm into an FPT algorithm.The first step of the proof is an XP algorithm by Johnson et al. in 2001 that decides whether a directed graph D has directed tree-width at most 3k − 2 or admits a haven of order k. It is worth mentioning that a skecth of an FPT algorithm for this problem appears in Chapter 9 of the book ”Classes of Directed Graphs”, from 2018, with an approximation factor of 5k + 2. Our first contribution is to adapt the proof from Johnson et al. to find either an arboreal decomposition of width at most 3k − 2 or a haven of order k in a directed graph D in FPT time, by making use of important separators. We then follow the roadmap of the proof by Kawarabayashi and Kreutzer by locally improving the complexity at some steps, in particular concerning the problem of finding hitting sets for brambles of large order.

Polynomial Bounds for the Grid-Minor Theorem

One of the key results in Robertson and Seymour’s seminal work on graph minors is the grid-minor theorem (also called the excluded grid theorem ). The theorem states that for every grid H , every graph whose treewidth is large enough relative to | V ( H )| contains H as a minor. This theorem has found many applications in graph theory and algorithms. Let f ( k ) denote the largest value such that every graph of treewidth k contains a grid minor of size ( f ( k ) × f ( k )). The best previous quantitative bound, due to recent work of Kawarabayashi and Kobayashi, and Leaf and Seymour, shows that f ( k )=Ω(√log k /log log k ). In contrast, the best known upper bound implies that f ( k ) = O (√ k /log k ). In this article, we obtain the first polynomial relationship between treewidth and grid minor size by showing that f ( k ) = Ω( k δ ) for some fixed constant δ &gt; 0, and describe a randomized algorithm, whose running time is polynomial in | V ( G )| and k , that with high probability finds a model of such a grid minor in G .

Approximated Poncelet configurations

In this short note we present the approximate construction of closed Poncelet configurations using the simulation of a mathematical pendulum. Although the idea goes back to the work of Jacobi ([17]), only the use of modern computer technologies assures the success of the construction. We present also some remarks on using such problems in project based university courses and we present a Matlab program able to produce animated Poncelet configurations with given period. In the same spirit we construct Steiner configurations and we give a few teaching oriented remarks on the Poncelet grid theorem.

A short proof of Halin’s grid theorem

We give a short proof of Halin’s theorem that every thick end of a graph contains the infinite grid.

Highly Connected Sets and the Excluded Grid Theorem

We present a short proof of the excluded grid theorem of Robertson and Seymour, the fact that a graph has no large grid minor if and only if it has small tree-width. We further propose a very simple obstruction to small tree-width inspired by that proof, showing that a graph has small tree-width if and only if it contains no large highly connected set of vertices.

Finding k Disjoint Paths in a Directed Planar Graph

It is shown that, for each fixed $k$, the problem of finding $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint directed paths between given pairs of terminals in a directed planar graph is solvable in polynomial time.