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arXiv · 2411.02561

The Erdős-Pósa property for infinite graphs

Thilo Krill
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Abstract

We investigate which classes of infinite graphs have the Erdős-Pósa property (EPP). In addition to the usual EPP, we also consider the following infinite variant of the EPP: a class $\mathcal{G}$ of graphs has the $κ$-EPP, where $κ$ is an infinite cardinal, if for any graph $Γ$ there are either $κ$ disjoint graphs from $\mathcal{G}$ in $Γ$ or there is a set $X$ of vertices of $Γ$ of size less than $κ$ such that $Γ- X$ contains no graph from $\mathcal{G}$. In particular, we study the ($κ$-)EPP for classes consisting of a single infinite graph $G$. We obtain positive results when the set of induced subgraphs of $G$ is labelled well-quasi-ordered, and negative results when $G$ is not a proper subgraph of itself (both results require some additional conditions). As a corollary, we obtain that every graph which does not contain a path of length $n$ for some $n \in \mathbb{N}$ has the EPP and the $κ$-EPP. Furthermore, we show that the class of all subdivisions of any tree $T$ has the $κ$-EPP for every uncountable cardinal $κ$, and if $T$ is rayless, also the $\aleph_0$-EPP and the EPP.

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Thilo Krill. 2024-11-04. The Erdős-Pósa property for infinite graphs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.02561

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