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Paul Seymour

Publications and source records attributed to Paul Seymour.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2024

Induced subgraph density. V. All paths approach Erdos-Hajnal

The Erdős-Hajnal conjecture says that, for every graph $H$, there exists $c>0$ such that every $H$-free graph on $n$ vertices has a clique or stable set of size at least $n^c$. In this paper we are concerned with the case when $H$ is a path. The conjecture has been proved for paths with at most five vertices, but not for longer paths. We prove that the conjecture is ``nearly'' true for all paths: for every path $H$, all $H$-free graphs with $n$ vertices have cliques or stable sets of size at least $2^{(\log n)^{1-o(1)}}$.

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arXiv2024

Some results and problems on tournament structure

This paper is a survey of results and problems related to the following question: is it true that if G is a tournament with sufficiently large chromatic number, then G has two vertex-disjoint subtournaments A,B, both with large chromatic number, such that all edges between them are directed from A to B? We describe what we know about this question, and report some progress on several other related questions, on tournament colouring and domination.

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arXiv2024

Thomassen's theorem on the two-linkage problem in acyclic digraphs: a shorter proof

Let G be an acyclic digraph, and let a, b, c, d be vertices, where a, b are sources, c, d are sinks, and every other vertex has in-degree and out-degree at least two. In 1985, Thomassen showed that there do not exist disjoint directed paths from a to c and from b to d, if and only if G can be drawn in a closed disc with a, b, c, d drawn in the boundary in order. We give a shorter proof.

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arXiv2024

Induced subgraph density. II. Sparse and dense sets in cographs

A well-known theorem of Rödl says that for every graph $H$, and every $ε>0$, there exists $δ>0$ such that if $G$ does not contain an induced copy of $H$, then there exists $X\subseteq V(G)$ with $|X|\ge δ|G|$ such that one of $G[X],\overline{G}[X]$ has edge-density at most $ε$. But how does $δ$ depend on $ε$? Fox and Sudakov conjectured that the dependence is at most polynomial: that for all $H$ there exists $c>0$ such that for all $ε$ with $0<ε\le 1/2$, Rödl's theorem holds with $δ=ε^c$. This conjecture implies the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture, and until now it had not been verified for any non-trivial graphs $H$. Our first result shows that it is true when $H=P_4$. Indeed, in that case we can take $δ=ε$, and insist that one of $G[X],\overline{G}[X]$ has maximum degree at most $ε^2|G|$). Second, we will show that every graph $H$ that can be obtained by substitution from copies of $P_4$ satisfies the Fox-Sudakov conjecture. To prove this, we need to work with a stronger property. Let us say $H$ is {\em viral} if there exists $c>0$ such that for all $ε$ with $0<ε\le 1/2$, if $G$ contains at most $ε^c|G|^{|H|}$ copies of $H$ as induced subgraphs, then there exists $X\subseteq V(G)$ with $|X|\ge ε^c|G|$ such that one of $G[X],\overline{G}[X]$ has edge-density at most $ε$. We will show that $P_4$ is viral, using a ``polynomial $P_4$-removal lemma'' of Alon and Fox. We will also show that the class of viral graphs is closed under vertex-substitution. Finally, we give a different strengthening of Rödl's theorem: we show that if $G$ does not contain an induced copy of $P_4$, then its vertices can be partitioned into at most $480ε^{-4}$ subsets $X$ such that one of $G[X],\overline{G}[X]$ has maximum degree at most $ε|X|$.

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arXiv2024

Distant digraph domination

A {\em $k$-kernel} in a digraph $G$ is a stable set $X$ of vertices such that every vertex of $G$ can be joined from $X$ by a directed path of length at most $k$. We prove three results about $k$-kernels. First, it was conjectured by Erdős and Székely in 1976 that every digraph $G$ with no source has a 2-kernel $|K|$ with $|K|\le |G|/2$. We prove this conjecture when $G$ is a ``split digraph'' (that is, its vertex set can be partitioned into a tournament and a stable set), improving a result of Langlois et al., who proved that every split digraph $G$ with no source has a 2-kernel of size at most $2|G|/3$. Second, the Erdős-Székely conjecture implies that in every digraph $G$ there is a 2-kernel $K$ such that the union of $K$ and its out-neighbours has size at least $|G|/2$. We prove that this is true if $V(G)$ can be partitioned into a tournament and an acyclic set. Third, in a recent paper, Spiro asked whether, for all $k\ge 3$, every strongly-connected digraph $G$ has a $k$-kernel of size at most about $|G|/(k+1)$. This remains open, but we prove that there is one of size at most about $|G|/(k-1)$.

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arXiv2024

Excluding the fork and antifork

The fork is the tree obtained from the claw $K_{1,3}$ by subdividing one of its edges once, and the antifork is its complement graph. We give a complete description of all graphs that do not contain the fork or antifork as induced subgraphs.

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arXiv2024

Induced subgraph density. III. Cycles and subdivisions

We show that for every two cycles $C,D$, there exists $c>0$ such that if $G$ is both $C$-free and $\overline{D}$-free then $G$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $|G|^c$. ("$H$-free" means with no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H$, and $\overline{D}$ denotes the complement graph of $D$.) Since the five-vertex cycle $C_5$ is isomorphic to its complement, this extends the earlier result that $C_5$ satisfies the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture. It also unifies and strengthens several other results. The results for cycles are special cases of results for subdivisions, as follows. Let $H,J$ be obtained from smaller graphs by subdividing every edge exactly twice. We will prove that there exists $c>0$ such that if $G$ is both $H$-free and $\overline{J}$-free then $G$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $|G|^c$. And the same holds if $H$ and/or $J$ is obtained from a graph bychoosing a forest $F$ and subdividing every edge not in $F$ at least five times. Our proof uses the framework of iterative sparsification developed in other papers of this series. Along the way, we will also give a short and simple proof of a celebrated result of Fox and Sudakov, that says that for all $H$, every $H$-free graph contains either a large stable set or a large complete bipartite subgraph.

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arXiv2024

Excluding disjoint Kuratowski graphs

A graph is a ``$k$-Kuratowski graph'' if it has exactly $k$ components, each isomorphic to $K_5$ or to $K_{3,3}$. We prove that if a graph $G$ contains no $k$-Kuratowski graph as a minor,then there is a set $X$ of boundedly many vertices such that $G\setminus X$ can be drawn in a (possibly disconnected) surface in which no $k$-Kuratowski graph can be drawn.

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arXiv2024

Excluding sums of Kuratowski graphs

We prove that a graph does not contain as a minor a graph formed by 0-, 1-, 2- or 3-summing $k$ copies of $K_5$ or $K_{3,3}$, if and only if it has bounded genus.

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arXiv2024

Induced subgraph density. I. A loglog step towards Erdos-Hajnal

In 1977, Erdős and Hajnal made the conjecture that, for every graph $H$, there exists $c>0$ such that every $H$-free graph $G$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $|G|^c$; and they proved that this is true with $ |G|^c$ replaced by $2^{c\sqrt{\log |G|}}$. Until now, there has been no improvement on this result (for general $H$). We prove a strengthening: that for every graph $H$, there exists $c>0$ such that every $H$-free graph $G$ with $|G|\ge 2$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $$2^{c\sqrt{\log |G|\log\log|G|}}.$$ Indeed, we prove the corresponding strengthening of a theorem of Fox and Sudakov, which in turn was a common strengthening of theorems of Rödl, Nikiforov, and the theorem of Erdős and Hajnal mentioned above.

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arXiv2024

Pure pairs. IX. Transversal trees

Fix k>0, and let G be a graph, with vertex set partitioned into k subsets (`blocks') of approximately equal size. An induced subgraph of G is transversal (with respect to this partition) if it has exactly one vertex in each block (and therefore it has exactly k vertices). A pure pair in G is a pair X,Y of disjoint subsets of V(G) such that either all edges between X,Y are present or none are; and in the present context we are interested in pure pairs (X,Y) where each of X,Y is a subset of one of the blocks, and not the same block. This paper collects several results and open questions concerning how large a pure pair must be present if various types of transversal subgraphs are excluded.

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arXiv2024

Bounded diameter tree-decompositions

When does a graph admit a tree-decomposition in which every bag has small diameter? For finite graphs, this is a property of interest in algorithmic graph theory, where it is called having bounded ``tree-length''. We will show that this is equivalent to being ``boundedly quasi-isometric to a tree'', which for infinite graphs is a much-studied property from metric geometry. One object of this paper is to tie these two areas together. We will prove that there is a tree-decomposition in which each bag has small diameter, if and only if there is a map $ϕ$ from $V(G)$ into the vertex set of a tree $T$, such that for all $u,v\in V(G)$, the distances $d_G(u,v), d_T(ϕ(u),ϕ(v))$ differ by at most a constant. A ``geodesic loaded cycle'' in $G$ is a pair $(C,F)$, where $C$ is a cycle of $G$ and $F\subseteq E(C)$, such that for every pair $u,v$ of vertices of $C$, one of the paths of $C$ between $u,v$ contains at most $d_G(u,v)$ $F$-edges, where $d_G(u,v)$ is the distance between $u,v$ in $G$. We will show that a graph $G$ admits a tree-decomposition in which every bag has small diameter, if and only if $|F|$ is small for every geodesic loaded cycle $(C,F)$. Our proof is an extension of an algorithm to approximate tree-length in finite graphs by Dourisboure and Gavoille. In metric geometry, there is a similar theorem that characterizes when a graph is quasi-isometric to a tree, ``Manning's bottleneck criterion''. The goal of this paper is to tie all these concepts together, and add a few more related ideas. For instance, we prove a conjecture of Rose McCarty, that $G$ admits a tree-decomposition in which every bag has small diameter, if and only if for all vertices $u,v,w$ of $G$, some ball of small radius meets every path joining two of $u,v,w$.

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arXiv2023

Graphs with all holes the same length

A graph is "$\ell$-holed" if all its induced cycles of length at least four have length exactly $\ell$. We give a complete description of the $\ell$-holed graphs for each $\ell\ge 7$.

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arXiv2023

Pure pairs. VIII. Excluding a sparse graph

A pure pair of size $t$ in a graph $G$ is a pair $A,B$ of disjoint sets of $t$ vertices such that $A$ is either complete or anticomplete to $B$. It is known that, for every forest $H$, every graph on $n\ge2$ vertices that does not contain $H$ or its complement as an induced subgraph has a pure pair of size $Ω(n)$; furthermore, this only holds when $H$ or its complement is a forest. In this paper, we look at pure pairs of size $n^{1-c}$, where $0 c$.

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arXiv2023

Pure pairs. X. Tournaments and the strong Erdos-Hajnal property

A pure pair in a tournament $G$ is an ordered pair $(A,B)$ of disjoint subsets of $V(G)$ such that every vertex in $B$ is adjacent from every vertex in $A$. Which tournaments $H$ have the property that if $G$ is a tournament not containing $H$ as a subtournament, and $|G|>1$, there is a pure pair $(A,B)$ in $G$ with $|A|,|B|\ge c|G|$, where $c>0$ is a constant independent of $G$? Let us say that such a tournament $H$ has the strong EH-property. As far as we know, it might be that a tournament $H$ has this property if and only if its vertex set has a linear ordering in which its backedges form a forest. Certainly this condition is necessary, but we are far from proving sufficiency. We make a small step in this direction, showing that if a tournament can be ordered with at most three backedges then it has the strong EH-property (except for one case, that we could not decide). In particular, every tournament with at most six vertices has the property, except for three that we could not decide. We also give a seven-vertex tournament that does not have the strong EH-property. This is related to the Erdos-Hajnal conjecture, which in one form says that for every tournament $H$ there exists $τ>0$ such that every tournament $G$ not containing $H$ as a subtournament has a transitive subtournament of cardinality at least $|G|^τ$. Let us say that a tournament $H$ satisfying this has the EH-property. It is known that every tournament with the strong EH-property also has the EH-property; so our result extends work by Berger, Choromanski and Chudnovsky, who proved that every tournament with at most six vertices has the EH-property, except for one that they did not decide.

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arXiv2023

On a problem of El-Zahar and Erdoos

Two subgraphs $A,B$ of a graph $G$ are anticomplete if they are vertex-disjoint and there are no edges joining them. Is it true that if $G$ is a graph with bounded clique number, and sufficiently large chromatic number, then it has two anticomplete subgraphs, both with large chromatic number? This is a question raised by El-Zahar and Erdős in 1986, and remains open. If so, then at least there should be two anticomplete subgraphs both with large minimum degree, and that is one of our results. We prove two variants of this. First, a strengthening: we can ask for one of the two subgraphs to have large chromatic number: that is, for all $t, c\ge 1$ there exists $d\ge 1$ such that if $G$ has chromatic number at least $d$, and does not contain the complete graph $K_t$ as a subgraph, then there are anticomplete subgraphs $A,B$, where $A$ has minimum degree at least $c$ and $B$ has chromatic number at least $c$. Second, we look at what happens if we replace the hypothesis that $G$ has sufficiently large chromatic number with the hypothesis that $G$ has sufficently large minimum degree. This, together with excluding $K_t$, is {\em not} enough to guarantee two anticomplete subgraphs both with large minimum degree; but it works if instead of xcluding $K_t$ we exclude the complete bipartite graph $K_{t,t}$. More exactly: for all $t, c\ge 1$ there exists $d\ge 1$ such that if $G$ has minimum degree at least $d$, and does not contain the complete bipartite graph $K_{t,t}$ as a subgraph, then there are two anticomplete subgraphs both with minimum degree at least $c$.

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arXiv2023

Polynomial bounds for chromatic number VI. Adding a four-vertex path

A class of graphs is $χ$-bounded if there is a function $f$ such that every graph $G$ in the class has chromatic number at most $f(ω(G))$, where $ω(G)$ is the clique number of $G$; the class is polynomially $χ$-bounded if $f$ can be taken to be a polynomial. The Gyárfás-Sumner conjecture asserts that, for every forest $H$, the class of $H$-free graphs (graphs with no induced copy of $H$) is $χ$-bounded. Let us say a forest $H$ is good if it satisfies the stronger property that the class of $H$-free graphs is polynomially $χ$-bounded. Very few forests are known to be good: for example, it is open for the five-vertex path. Indeed, it is not even known that if every component of a forest $H$ is good then $H$ is good, and in particular, it was not known that the disjoint union of two four-vertex paths is good. Here we show the latter, and more generally, that if $H$ is good then so is the disjoint union of $H$ and a four-vertex path. We also prove a more general result: if every component of $H_1$ is good, and $H_2$ is any path (or broom) then the class of graphs that are both $H_1$-free and $H_2$-free is polynomially $χ$-bounded.

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