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Robin Thomas

Publications and source records attributed to Robin Thomas.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2014

Deploying robots with two sensors in $K_{1,6}$-free graphs

Let $G$ be a graph of minimum degree at least two with no induced subgraph isomorphic to $K_{1,6}$. We prove that if $G$ is not isomorphic to one of eight exceptional graphs, then it is possible to assign two-element subsets of $\{1,2,3,4,5\}$ to the vertices of $G$ in such a way that for every $i\in\{1,2,3,4,5\}$ and every vertex $v\in V(G)$ the label $i$ is assigned to $v$ or one of its neighbors. It follows that $G$ has fractional domatic number at least $5/2$. This is motivated by a problem in robotics and generalizes a result of Fujita, Yamashita and Kameda who proved that the same conclusion holds for all $3$-regular graphs.

math.CO↗
arXiv2014

Five-list-coloring graphs on surfaces I. Two lists of size two in planar graphs

Let G be a plane graph with outer cycle C, let u,v be vertices of C and let (L(x):x in V(G)) be a family of sets such that |L(u)|=|L(v)|=2, L(x) has at least three elements for every vertex x of C-{u,v} and L(x) has at least five elements for every vertex x of G-V(C). We prove a conjecture of Hutchinson that G has a (proper) coloring f such that f(x) belongs to L(x) for every vertex x of G. We will use this as a lemma in subsequent papers.

math.CO↗
arXiv2014

Excluded minors in cubic graphs

Let G be a cubic graph, with girth at least five, such that for every partition X,Y of its vertex set with |X|,|Y|>6 there are at least six edges between X and Y. We prove that if there is no homeomorphic embedding of the Petersen graph in G, and G is not one particular 20-vertex graph, then either G\v is planar for some vertex v, or G can be drawn with crossings in the plane, but with only two crossings, both on the infinite region. We also prove several other theorems of the same kind.

math.CO↗
arXiv2014

Reducibility in the Four-Color Theorem

In [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 70 (1997), 2-44] we gave a simplified proof of the Four-Color Theorem. The proof is computer-assisted in the sense that for two lemmas in the article we did not give proofs, and instead asserted that we have verified those statements using a computer. Here we give additional details for one of those lemmas, and we include the original computer programs and data as "ancillary files" accompanying this submission.

math.CO↗
arXiv2014

Discharging cartwheels

In [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 70 (1997), 2-44] we gave a simplified proof of the Four-Color Theorem. The proof is computer-assisted in the sense that for two lemmas in the article we did not give proofs, and instead asserted that we have verified those statements using a computer. Here we give additional details for one of those lemmas, and we include the original computer programs and data as "ancillary files" accompanying this submission.

math.CO↗
arXiv2014

Non-Embeddable Extensions of Embedded Minors

A graph G is weakly 4-connected if it is 3-connected, has at least five vertices, and for every pair of sets (A,B) with union V(G) and intersection of size three such that no edge has one end in A-B and the other in B-A, one of the induced subgraphs G[A], G[B] has at most four edges. We describe a set of constructions that starting from a weakly 4-connected planar graph G produce a finite list of non-planar weakly 4-connected graphs, each having a minor isomorphic to G, such that every non-planar weakly 4-connected graph H that has a minor isomorphic to G has a minor isomorphic to one of the graphs in the list. Our main result is more general and applies in particular to polyhedral embeddings in any surface.

math.CO↗
arXiv2013

Odd K_3,3 subdivisions in bipartite graphs

We prove that every internally 4-connected non-planar bipartite graph has an odd K_3,3 subdivision; that is, a subgraph obtained from K_3,3 by replacing its edges by internally disjoint odd paths with the same ends. The proof gives rise to a polynomial-time algorithm to find such a subdivision. (A bipartite graph G is internally 4-connected if it is 3-connected, has at least five vertices, and there is no partition (A,B,C) of V(G) such that |A|,|B|>1, |C|=3 and G has no edge with one end in A and the other in B.)

math.CO↗
arXiv2013

K_6 minors in 6-connected graphs of bounded tree-width

We prove that every sufficiently big 6-connected graph of bounded tree-width either has a K_6 minor, or has a vertex whose deletion makes the graph planar. This is a step toward proving that the same conclusion holds for all sufficiently big 6-connected graphs. Jorgensen conjectured that it holds for all 6-connected graphs.

math.CO↗
arXiv2013

Three-coloring triangle-free planar graphs in linear time

Grotzsch's theorem states that every triangle-free planar graph is 3-colorable. Several relatively simple proofs of this fact were provided by Thomassen and other authors. It is easy to convert these proofs into quadratic-time algorithms to find a 3-coloring, but it is not clear how to find such a coloring in linear time (Kowalik used a nontrivial data structure to construct an O(n log n) algorithm). We design a linear-time algorithm to find a 3-coloring of a given triangle-free planar graph. The algorithm avoids using any complex data structures, which makes it easy to implement. As a by-product we give a yet simpler proof of Grotzsch's theorem.

math.CO↗
arXiv2013

Testing first-order properties for subclasses of sparse graphs

We present a linear-time algorithm for deciding first-order (FO) properties in classes of graphs with bounded expansion, a notion recently introduced by Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez. This generalizes several results from the literature, because many natural classes of graphs have bounded expansion: graphs of bounded tree-width, all proper minor-closed classes of graphs, graphs of bounded degree, graphs with no subgraph isomorphic to a subdivision of a fixed graph, and graphs that can be drawn in a fixed surface in such a way that each edge crosses at most a constant number of other edges. We deduce that there is an almost linear-time algorithm for deciding FO properties in classes of graphs with locally bounded expansion. More generally, we design a dynamic data structure for graphs belonging to a fixed class of graphs of bounded expansion. After a linear-time initialization the data structure allows us to test an FO property in constant time, and the data structure can be updated in constant time after addition/deletion of an edge, provided the list of possible edges to be added is known in advance and their simultaneous addition results in a graph in the class. All our results also hold for relational structures and are based on the seminal result of Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez on the existence of low tree-depth colorings.

cs.DM↗
arXiv2012

K_6 minors in large 6-connected graphs

Jorgensen conjectured that every 6-connected graph with no K_6 minor has a vertex whose deletion makes the graph planar. We prove the conjecture for all sufficiently large graphs.

math.CO↗
arXiv2012

Five-coloring graphs on the Klein bottle

We exhibit an explicit list of nine graphs such that a graph drawn in the Klein bottle is 5-colorable if and only if it has no subgraph isomorphic to a member of the list.

math.CO↗
arXiv2011

Edge-coloring series-parallel multigraphs

We give a simpler proof of Seymour's Theorem on edge-coloring series-parallel multigraphs and derive a linear-time algorithm to check whether a given series-parallel multigraph can be colored with a given number of colors.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2011

Color-Critical Graphs Have Logarithmic Circumference

A graph G is k-critical if every proper subgraph of G is (k-1)-colorable, but the graph G itself is not. We prove that every k-critical graph on n vertices has a cycle of length at least log n/(100log k), improving a bound of Alon, Krivelevich and Seymour from 2000. Examples of Gallai from 1963 show that the bound cannot be improved to exceed 2(k-1)log n/log(k-2). We thus settle the problem of bounding the minimal circumference of k-critical graphs, raised by Dirac in 1952 and Kelly and Kelly in 1954.

math.CO↗
arXiv2010

Packing directed circuits exactly

We give an "excluded minor" and a "structural" characterization of digraphs D that have the property that for every subdigraph H of D, the maximum number of disjoint circuits in H is equal to the minimum cardinality of a subset T of V(H) such that H\T is acyclic.

math.CO↗
arXiv2010

Large Non-Planar Graphs and an Application to Crossing-Critical Graphs

We prove that, for every positive integer k, there is an integer N such that every 4-connected non-planar graph with at least N vertices has a minor isomorphic to K_{4,k}, the graph obtained from a cycle of length 2k+1 by adding an edge joining every pair of vertices at distance exactly k, or the graph obtained from a cycle of length k by adding two vertices adjacent to each other and to every vertex on the cycle. We also prove a version of this for subdivisions rather than minors, and relax the connectivity to allow 3-cuts with one side planar and of bounded size. We deduce that for every integer k there are only finitely many 3-connected 2-crossing-critical graphs with no subdivision isomorphic to the graph obtained from a cycle of length 2k by joining all pairs of diagonally opposite vertices.

math.CO↗