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arXiv · 2311.03341

On polynomial degree-boundedness

Romain Bourneuf·Matija Bucić·Linda Cook·James Davies
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Abstract

We prove a conjecture of Bonamy, Bousquet, Pilipczuk, Rz\k{a}\.zewski, Thomass\'e, and Walczak, that for every graph $H$, there is a polynomial $p$ such that for every positive integer $s$, every graph of average degree at least $p(s)$ contains either $K_{s,s}$ as a subgraph or contains an induced subdivision of $H$. This improves upon a result of K\"uhn and Osthus from 2004 who proved it for graphs whose average degree is at least triply exponential in $s$ and a recent result of Du, Gir\~{a}o, Hunter, McCarty and Scott for graphs with average degree at least singly exponential in $s$. As an application, we prove that the class of graphs that do not contain an induced subdivision of $K_{s,t}$ is polynomially $\chi$-bounded. In the case of $K_{2,3}$, this is the class of theta-free graphs, and answers a question of Davies. Along the way, we also answer a recent question of McCarty, by showing that if $\mathcal{G}$ is a hereditary class of graphs for which there is a polynomial $p$ such that every bipartite $K_{s,s}$-free graph in $\mathcal{G}$ has average degree at most $p(s)$, then more generally, there is a polynomial $p'$ such that every $K_{s,s}$-free graph in $\mathcal{G}$ has average degree at most $p'(s)$. Our main new tool is an induced variant of the K\H{o}v\'ari-S\'os-Tur\'an theorem, which we find to be of independent interest.

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Romain Bourneuf, Matija Bucić, Linda Cook, James Davies. 2023-11-06. On polynomial degree-boundedness. https://doi.org/10.19086/aic.2024.5

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