The notion of treewidth has seen to be a powerful vehicle for many graph algorithmic studies. This survey paper wants to give an overview of many classes of graphs that can be seen to have a uniform upper bound on the treewidth of graphs in the class. Also, some mutual relations between such classes are discussed.

This paper gives an overview of several results and techniques for graphs algorithms that compute the treewidth of a graph or that solve otherwise intractable problems when restricted graphs with bounded treewidth more efficiently. Also, several results on graph minors are reviewed.

We prove that, for any fixed k, one can construct a linear time algorithm that checks if a graph has branchwidth k and, if so, outputs a branch decomposition of minimum width. 1 Introduction This paper considers the problem of finding branch decompositions of graphs with small branchwidth. The notion of branchwidth has a close relationship to the more well-known notion of treewidth, a notion that has come to play a large role in many recent investigations in algorithmic graph theory. (See Section 2 for definitions of treewidth and branchwidth.) One reason for the interest in this notion is that many graph problems can be solved by linear time algorithms, when the inputs are restricted to graphs with some uniform upper bound on their treewidth. Most of these algorithms first try to find a tree decomposition of small width, and then utilize the advantages of the tree structure of the decomposition (see [1], [4]). The branchwidth of a graph differs from its treewidth by at most a multipl...

In this paper we investigate both the structure of graphs with branchwidth at most three, as well as algorithms to recognise such graphs. We show that a graph has branchwidth at most three, if and only if it has treewidth at most three and does not contain the three-dimensional binary cube graph as a minor. A set of four graphs is shown to be the obstruction set of graphs with branchwidth at most three. We give a safe and complete set of reduction rules for the graphs with branchwidth at most three. Using this set, a linear time algorithm is given that checks if a given graph has branchwidth at most three, and, if so, outputs a minimum width branch decomposition. Keywords: graph algorithms, branchwidth, obstruction set, graph minor, reduction rule. 1 Introduction This paper considers the study of the graphs with branchwidth at most three. The notion of branchwidth has a close relationship to the more well-known notion of treewidth, a notion that has come to play a large role in many ...

For each pair of nonadjacent vertices in a graph, consider the greater of the degrees of the two vertices. The minimum of these maxima is a lower bound on the treewidth of a graph, unless it is a complete graph. This bound has three consequences. First, the obstructions of order w + 3 for treewidth w have a simple structural characterization. Second, these graphs are exactly the pathwidth obstructions of order w + 3. Finally, although there is only one obstruction of order w + 2 for width w, the number of obstructions of order w + 3 is bounded below by an exponential function of # w.

This chapter gives a general overview of two emerging techniques for discrete optimization that have footholds in mathematics, computer science, and operations research: branch decompositions and tree decompositions. Branch decompositions and tree decompositions along with their respective connectivity invariants, branchwidth and treewidth, were first introduced to aid in proving the Graph Minors Theorem, a wellknown conjecture (Wagner’s conjecture) in graph theory. The algorithmic importance of branch decompositions and tree decompositions for solving NP-hard problems modelled on graphs was first realized by computer scientists in relation to formulating graph problems in monadic second order logic. The dynamic programming techniques utilizing branch decompositions and tree decompositions, called branch decomposition and tree decomposition based algorithms, fall into a class of algorithms known as fixed-parameter tractable algorithms and have been shown to be effective in a practical setting for NP-hard problems such as minimum domination, the travelling salesman problem, general minor containment, and frequency assignment problems.

The linear-width of a graph G is defined to be the smallest integer k such that the edges of G can be arranged in a linear ordering (e 1 ; : : : ; e r ) in such a way that for every i = 1; : : : ; r \Gamma 1, there are at most k vertices incident to edges that belong both to fe 1 ; : : : ; e i g and to fe i+1 ; : : : ; e r g. In this paper, we give a set of 57 graphs and prove that it is the set of the minimal forbidden minors for the class of graphs with linear-width at most two. Our proof also gives a linear time algorithm that either reports that a given graph has linear-width more than two or outputs an edge ordering of minimum linear-width. We further prove a structural connection between linear-width and the mixed search number which enables us to determine, for any k 1, the set acyclic forbidden minors for the class of graphs with linear-width k. Moreover, due to this connection, our algorithm can be transfered to two linear time algorithms that check whether a graph has mixe...

The problem of finding a triangulation of a convex three-dimensional polytope with few tetrahedra is NP-hard. We discuss other related complexity results.

Many real-life problems can be modeled by graph-theoretic problems. These graph problems are usually NP-hard and hence there is no efficient algorithm for solving them, unless P= NP. One way to overcome this hardness is to solve the problems when restricted to special graphs. Trees are one kind of graph for which several NP-complete problems can be solved in polynomial time. Graphs of bounded treewidth, which generalize trees, show good algorithmic properties similar to those of trees. Using ideas developed for tree algorithms, Arnborg and Proskurowski introduced a general dynamic programming approach which solves many problems such as dominating set, vertex cover and independent set. Others used this approach to solve other NP-hard problems. Matousek and Thomas applied this approach to solve the subgraph isomorphism problem when the source graph has bounded degree and the host graph has bounded treewidth. In this thesis, we introduce a new property for graphs called log-bounded fragmentation, by which we mean after removing any set of at most k vertices the number of connected components is at most O(k log n), where n is the number of vertices of the graph. We then extend the result of Matousek and Thomas to the case in which the source graph is a log-bounded fragmentation graph and the host graph has bounded treewidth. Besides this result, we demonstrate how bounded fragmentation might be used to measure the reliability of a network.

All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or other means, without the permission of the author. Supervisor: M. R. Fellows A substantial part of the history of graph theory deals with the study and classi-cation of sets of graphs that share common properties. One predominant trend is to characterize graph families by sets of minimal forbidden graphs (within some partial ordering on the graphs). For example, the famous Kuratowski Theorem classi es the planar graph family by two forbidden graphs (in the topological partial order). Most, if not all, of the current approaches for nding these forbidden substructure characterizations use extensive and specialized case analysis. Thus, until now, for a xed graph family,thistype of mathematical theorem proving often required months or even years of human e ort. The main focus of this dissertation is to develop a practical theory for automating (with distributed computer programming) this clas-sic part of graph theory. We extend and (more importantly) implement avariation