Linearity of grid minors in treewidth with applications through bidimensionality

Combinatorica volume 28, pages19–36(2008)Cite this article

Abstract

We prove that any H-minor-free graph, for a fixed graph H, of treewidth w has an Ω(w) × Ω(w) grid graph as a minor. Thus grid minors suffice to certify that H-minorfree graphs have large treewidth, up to constant factors. This strong relationship was previously known for the special cases of planar graphs and bounded-genus graphs, and is known not to hold for general graphs. The approach of this paper can be viewed more generally as a framework for extending combinatorial results on planar graphs to hold on H-minor-free graphs for any fixed H. Our result has many combinatorial consequences on bidimensionality theory, parameter-treewidth bounds, separator theorems, and bounded local treewidth; each of these combinatorial results has several algorithmic consequences including subexponential fixed-parameter algorithms and approximation algorithms.

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Affiliations

  1. MIT, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Erik D. Demaine & Mohammadtaghi Hajiaghayi

Authors
  1. Erik D. Demaine
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  2. Mohammadtaghi Hajiaghayi
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Correspondence to Erik D. Demaine.

Additional information

A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2005) [16].

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Demaine, E.D., Hajiaghayi, M. Linearity of grid minors in treewidth with applications through bidimensionality. Combinatorica 28, 19–36 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00493-008-2140-4

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Mathematics Subject Classification (2000)

  • 05C83
  • 05C85
  • 68R10