Hadwiger famously conjectured that every $K_h$-minor-free graph is properly $(h-1)$-colourable. This talk will present the following improper analogue of Hadwiger’s Conjecture: for fixed $h$, every $K_h$-minor-free graph is $(h-1)$-colourable with monochromatic components of bounded size. The number of colours is best possible regardless of the size of monochromatic components. This solves an open problem of Edwards, Kang, Kim, Oum and Seymour [SIAM J. Disc. Math. 2015], and concludes a line of research initiated in 2007. Similarly, for fixed $t\geqslant s$, we show that every $K_{s,t}$-minor-free graph is $(s+1)$-colourable with monochromatic components of bounded size. The number of colours is best possible, solving an open problem of van de Heuvel and Wood [J. London Math. Soc. 2018]. We actually prove a single theorem from which both of the above results are immediate corollaries. For an excluded apex minor, the result is strengthened as follows: for fixed $t \geqslant s \geqslant 3$, and for any fixed apex graph $X$, every $K_{s,t}$-subgraph-free $X$-minor-free graph is $(s+1)$-colourable with monochromatic components of bounded size. The number of colours is again best possible. This is joint work with Vida Dujmović, Louis Esperet and Pat Morin [arXiv:2306.06224].
David Wood gave an online talk on the maximum number of copies of a fixed forest in sparse graph classes at the Virtual Discrete Math Colloquium
On February 17, 2021, David Wood from Monash University gave an online talk at the Virtual Discrete Math Colloquium on the maximum number of copies of a fixed forest in various sparse graph classes. The title of his talk was “Tree densities of sparse graph classes“.
David Wood, Tree densities of sparse graph classes
This talk considers the following question at the intersection of extremal and structural graph theory: What is the maximum number of copies of a fixed forest $T$ in an $n$-vertex graph in a graph class $\mathcal{G}$ as $n\to \infty$? I will answer this question for a variety of sparse graph classes $\mathcal{G}$. In particular, we show that the answer is $\Theta(n^{\alpha_d(T)})$ where $\alpha_d(T)$ is the size of the largest stable set in the subforest of $T$ induced by the vertices of degree at most $d$, for some integer $d$ that depends on $\mathcal{G}$. For example, when $\mathcal{G}$ is the class of $k$-degenerate graphs then $d=k$; when $\mathcal{G}$ is the class of graphs containing no $K_{s,t}$-minor ($t\geq s$) then $d=s-1$; and when $\mathcal{G}$ is the class of $k$-planar graphs then $d=2$. All these results are in fact consequences of a single lemma in terms of a finite set of excluded subgraphs. This is joint work with Tony Huynh (arXiv:2009.12989).