Hadwiger Number and the Cartesian Product of Graphs

Chandran, Sunil L and Kostochka, Alexandr and Raju, Krishnam J (2008) Hadwiger Number and the Cartesian Product of Graphs. In: Graphs and Combinatorics, 24 (4). pp. 291-301.

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Abstract

The Hadwiger number eta(G) of a graph G is the largest integer n for which the complete graph K-n on n vertices is a minor of G. Hadwiger conjectured that for every graph G, eta(G) >= chi(G), where chi(G) is the chromatic number of G. In this paper, we study the Hadwiger number of the Cartesian product G square H of graphs. As the main result of this paper, we prove that eta(G(1) square G(2)) >= h root 1 (1 - o(1)) for any two graphs G(1) and G(2) with eta(G(1)) = h and eta(G(2)) = l. We show that the above lower bound is asymptotically best possible when h >= l. This asymptotically settles a question of Z. Miller (1978). As consequences of our main result, we show the following: 1. Let G be a connected graph. Let G = G(1) square G(2) square ... square G(k) be the ( unique) prime factorization of G. Then G satisfies Hadwiger's conjecture if k >= 2 log log chi(G) + c', where c' is a constant. This improves the 2 log chi(G) + 3 bound in [2] 2. Let G(1) and G(2) be two graphs such that chi(G1) >= chi(G2) >= clog(1.5)(chi(G(1))), where c is a constant. Then G1 square G2 satisfies Hadwiger's conjecture. 3. Hadwiger's conjecture is true for G(d) (Cartesian product of G taken d times) for every graph G and every d >= 2. This settles a question by Chandran and Sivadasan [2]. ( They had shown that the Hadiwger's conjecture is true for G(d) if d >= 3).

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Graphs and Combinatorics
Publisher:	Springer
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Springer.
Keywords:	Hadwiger Number;Hadwiger’s Conjecture;Graph Cartesian product;Minor;Chromatic number.
Department/Centre:	Division of Electrical Sciences > Computer Science & Automation
Date Deposited:	23 Mar 2010 11:19
Last Modified:	28 Feb 2019 08:40
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/26475

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