2015/10/24 by Błasiok, Jarosław, Kamiński, Marcin, Raymond, Jean-Florent +1 · 1 citation
#05C #06A07 #Combinatorics (math.CO) #Discrete Mathematics (cs.DM) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #G.2.2
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1510.07135
A graph H is an induced minor of a graph G if it can be obtained from an induced subgraph of G by contracting edges. Otherwise, G is said to be H-induced minor-free. Robin Thomas showed that K4-induced minor-free graphs are well-quasi-ordered by induced minors [Graphs without K4 and well-quasi-ordering, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B, 38(3):240 -- 247, 1985]. We provide a dichotomy theorem for H-induced minor-free graphs and show that the class of H-induced minor-free graphs is well-quasi-ordered by the induced minor relation if and only if H is an induced minor of the gem (the path on 4 vertices plus a dominating vertex) or of the graph obtained by adding a vertex of degree 2 to the complete graph on 4 vertices. To this end we proved two decomposition theorems which are of independent interest. Similar dichotomy results were previously given for subgraphs by Guoli Ding in [Subgraphs and well-quasi-ordering, Journal of Graph Theory, 16(5):489--502, 1992] and for induced subgraphs by Peter Damaschke in [Induced subgraphs and well-quasi-ordering, Journal of Graph Theory, 14(4):427--435, 1990].