arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Piotr Micek.
Dimension of partially ordered sets (posets for short) can be seen as a measure of how much space is needed to store posets. Refining the definition of dimension, or actually the local dimension, in this respect we obtain the notion of relative dimension. We discuss properties of relative dimension and we give bounds for relative dimension of some well-known families of posets.
A vertex-coloring of a graph is centered if every connected subgraph has a vertex with a unique color. A vertex-coloring of a graph is linear if every path in the graph has a vertex with a unique color. Let $\chi_{\mathrm{cen}}(G)$ and $\chi_{\mathrm{lin}}(G)$ be the minimum number of colors in a centered (resp. linear) coloring of $G$. We present a family of graphs witnessing that if $f$ is a nondecreasing function such that $\chi_{\mathrm{cen}}(G) \leq f(\chi_{\mathrm{lin}}(G))$ for every graph $G$, then $f(k) = \Omega(k^2 / \log k)$. The construction was found by OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Pro.
We prove that, for all positive integers $h$ and $t$ and every graph $X$ with $\mathrm{td}(X) \leq h$, there exists a positive integer $c(X,t)$ such that every graph $G$ with $\mathrm{tw}(G) < t$ that excludes $X$ as a topological minor is isomorphic to a subgraph of $H \boxtimes K_{c(X,t)}$ for some graph $H$ with $\mathrm{tw}(H) < 2^{h+1}-1$. This extends a result by Ding and Oporowski (Journal of Graph Theory; 1995), which states that for all positive integers $\Delta$ and $t$, here exists a positive integer $f(\Delta,t)$ such that every graph $G$ with $\mathrm{tw}(G)<t$ and $\Delta(G)\leq\Delta$ is isomorphic to a subgraph of $T \boxtimes K_{f(\Delta,t)}$ for some tree $T$.
We show that if a complete binary tree of height $h$ is isomorphic to a subgraph of the strong product of a graph $H$ and a path, then $\mathrm{pw}(H)$ is $\Omega(h)$. This solves a problem posed by Bose, Dujmovi\'c, Javarsineh, Morin, and Wood (2022). The proof was found by OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Pro.
We prove that there exist functions $f:\mathbb N^2\to\mathbb N$ and $g:\mathbb N\to\mathbb N$ such that for all positive integers $k$, $d$, and $\ell\ge3$, every graph $G$ either contains $k$ cycles of length at least $\ell$ that are pairwise at distance greater than $d$, or admits a subset of vertices $X$ with $|X|\le f(k,\ell)$ such that $G-B_G(X,g(d))$ contains no cycle of length at least $\ell$, where $B_G(X,r)$ denotes the ball of radius $r$ around $X$. This generalizes a theorem of Dujmovi\'c, Joret, Micek, and Morin (2024), which established the $\ell=3$ case. Moreover, we prove that the theorem holds with $f(k,\ell)\in\mathcal{O}(\ell k\log k)$ and $g(d)\in\mathcal{O}(d)$. The linear bound on $g$ is best possible, while the bound on $f$ is optimal as a function of $k$ for every fixed $\ell$. In particular, for $\ell=3$ our result improves the previous bound of $\mathcal{O}(k^{18}\mathsf{polylog} k)$ by Dujmovi\'c et al.
The dimension of a poset $P$ is the minimum positive integer $d$ such that $P$ is an induced subposet of $\mathbb{R}^d$ equipped with the product order. We give a constant-factor polynomial-time approximation algorithm for computing dimension in the class of posets with a planar (Hasse) diagram. While computing the dimension of a poset is NP-hard in general, the computational complexity of the problem for planar posets remains open. The algorithmic result is driven by a structural understanding of the canonical obstruction to small dimension: standard examples. A longstanding problem, originating in the early 1980s, asked whether every poset with a planar diagram has dimension bounded by a function of the maximum order of a standard example that it contains. In the first paper of the series, we have resolved the problem in a more general setting of posets with planar cover graphs by establishing a polynomial bound. We prove a stronger bound in the original setting, namely, for every poset $P$ with a planar diagram $\mathrm{dim}(P) \leq 96\mathrm{se}(P)+672$, where $\mathrm{dim}(P)$ denotes the dimension of $P$ and $\mathrm{se}(P)$ denotes the maximum order of a standard example contained in $P$.
We show that every proper minor-closed class of graphs admits a $(1+o(1))\log_2 n$-bit adjacency labelling scheme. Equivalently, for every proper minor-closed class $\mathcal{G}$ and every positive integer $n$ there exists an $n^{1+o(1)}$-vertex graph $U$ such that every $n$-vertex graph in $\mathcal{G}$ is isomorphic to an induced subgraph of $U$. Both results are optimal up to the lower order term. They generalize the corresponding results for planar graphs and apex-minor-free classes (Dujmovi\'c et al., J.~ACM 2021) to all proper minor-closed classes, answering the open question raised in that paper and anticipated earlier by Bonamy, Gavoille, and Pilipczuk (SODA 2020).
Sample compression schemes were defined by Littlestone and Warmuth (1986) as an abstraction of the structure underlying many learning algorithms. In a sample compression scheme, we are given a large sample of vertices of a fixed hypergraph with labels indicating the containment in some hyperedge. The task is to compress the sample in such a way that we can retrieve the labels of the original sample. The size of a sample compression scheme is the amount of information that is kept in the compression. Every hypergraph with a sample compression scheme of bounded size must have bounded VC-dimension. Conversely, Moran and Yehudayoff (J. ACM, 2016) showed that every hypergraph of bounded VC-dimension admits a sample compression scheme of bounded size. We study a specific class of hypergraphs emerging from balls in graphs. The schemes that we construct (contrary to the ones constructed by Moran and Yehudayoff) are \textit{proper}, meaning that we retrieve not only the labeling of the original sample but also a hyperedge (ball) consistent with the original labeling. First, we prove that for every graph $G$ of treewidth at most $t$, the hypergraph of balls in $G$ has a proper sample compression scheme of size $\mathcal{O}(t\log t)$; this is tight up to the logarithmic factor and improves the quadratic (improper) bound that follows from the result of Moran and Yehudayoff. Second, we prove an analogous result for graphs of cliquewidth at most $t$.
Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a proper minor-closed class of graphs. Given the minors excluded in $\mathcal{C}$, we determine the maximum $q$-centered chromatic number and the maximum $q$th weak coloring number of graphs in $\mathcal{C}$ within an $\mathcal{O}(q)$-factor. Moreover, when $\mathcal{C}$ excludes a planar graph, we determine it within a constant factor. Our results imply that the $q$-centered chromatic number of $K_t$-minor-free graphs is in $\mathcal{O}(q^{t-1})$, improving on the previously known $\mathcal{O}(q^{h(t)})$ bound with a large and non-explicit function $h$. We include similar bounds for another family of parameters, the fractional treedepth fragility rates. All our bounds are proved via the same general framework.
We show that every connected graph $G$ has a tree decomposition indexed by a tree $T$ such that $T$ is a subgraph of $G$ and the width of the tree decomposition is bounded from above by a function of the pathwidth of $G$. This answers a question of Blanco, Cook, Hatzel, Hilaire, Illingworth, and McCarty (2024), who proved that it is not possible to have such a tree decomposition whose width is bounded by a function of the treewidth of $G$. The proof relies on Simon's Factorization Theorem for finite semigroups, a tool that has already been applied successfully in various areas of graph theory and combinatorics in recent years. Our application is particularly simple and can serve as a good introduction to this technique.
Meyniel's conjecture states that $n$-vertex connected graphs have cop number $O(\sqrt{n})$. The current best known upper bound is $n/2^{(1-o(1))\sqrt{\log n}}$, proved independently by Lu and Peng (2011), and by Scott and Sudakov (2011). In this paper, we extend their result by showing that every connected graph with vertex cover number $k$ has cop number at most $k/2^{(1-o(1))\sqrt{\log k}}$. This is the first sublinear upper bound on the cop number in terms of the vertex cover number.
For a planar graph $H$, let $f(H)$ denote the minimum integer such that all graphs excluding $H$ as a minor have treewidth at most $f(H)$. We show that if $H$ is a disjoint union of $k$ cycles then $f(H)=O(|V(H)| + k \log k)$, which is best possible.
We prove that there exist functions $f$ and $g$ such that for all positive integers $k$ and $d$, for every graph $G$ and every subset $A$ of the vertices of $G$, either $G$ contains $k$ $A$-paths such that vertices of different $A$-paths are at distance at least $d$ in $G$, or there exists a set $X$ of the vertices of $G$ with $|X|\leq f(k)$ such that every $A$-path in $G$ contains a vertex of $B_G(X,g(k,d))$.
The dimension of a partially ordered set $P$ (poset for short) is the least positive integer $d$ such that $P$ is isomorphic to a subposet of $\mathbb{R}^d$ with the natural product order. Dimension is arguably the most widely studied measure of complexity for posets, and standard examples in posets are the canonical structure forcing dimension to be large. In many ways, dimension for posets is analogous to chromatic number for graphs with standard examples in posets playing the role of cliques in graphs. However, planar graphs have chromatic number at most four, while posets with planar diagrams may have arbitrarily large dimension. The key feature of all known constructions of such posets is that large dimension is forced by a large standard example. The question of whether every poset of large dimension and with a planar cover graph contains a large standard example has been a critical challenge in posets theory since the early 1980s, with very little progress over the years. We answer the question in the affirmative. Namely, we show that every poset $P$ with a planar cover graph has dimension $\mathcal{O}(s^8)$, where $s$ is the maximum order of a standard example in $P$.
A graph class $\mathcal{C}$ has polynomial expansion if there is a polynomial function $f$ such that for every graph $G\in \mathcal{C}$, each of the depth-$r$ minors of $G$ has average degree at most $f(r)$. In this note, we study bounded-radius variants of some classical graph parameters such as bramble number, linkedness and well-linkedness, and we show that they are pairwise polynomially related. Furthermore, in a monotone graph class with polynomial expansion they are all uniformly bounded by a polynomial in $r$.
We prove that there exist functions $f,g:\mathbb{N}\to\mathbb{N}$ such that for all nonnegative integers $k$ and $d$, for every graph $G$, either $G$ contains $k$ cycles such that vertices of different cycles have distance greater than $d$ in $G$, or there exists a subset $X$ of vertices of $G$ with $|X|\leq f(k)$ such that $G-B_G(X,g(d))$ is a forest, where $B_G(X,r)$ denotes the set of vertices of $G$ having distance at most $r$ from a vertex of $X$.
A vertex coloring $\varphi$ of a graph $G$ is $p$-centered if for every connected subgraph $H$ of $G$, either $\varphi$ uses more than $p$ colors on $H$, or there is a color that appears exactly once on $H$. We prove that for every fixed positive integer $t$, every $K_t$-minor-free graph admits a $p$-centered coloring using $\mathcal{O}(p^{t-1})$ colors.
We show that every $n$-vertex planar graph is contained in the graph obtained from a fan by blowing up each vertex by a complete graph of order $O(\sqrt{n}\log^2 n)$. Equivalently, every $n$-vertex planar graph $G$ has a set $X$ of $O(\sqrt{n}\log^2 n)$ vertices such that $G-X$ has bandwidth $O(\sqrt{n}\log^2 n)$. We in fact prove the same result for any proper minor-closed class, and we prove more general results that explore the trade-off between $X$ and the bandwidth of $G-X$. The proofs use three key ingredients. The first is a new local sparsification lemma, which shows that every $n$-vertex planar graph $G$ has a set of $O((n\log n)/\delta)$ vertices whose removal results in a graph with local density at most $\delta$. The second is a generalization of a method of Feige and Rao that relates bandwidth and local density using volume-preserving Euclidean embeddings. The third ingredient is graph products, which are a key tool in the extension to any proper minor-closed class.