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Highly connected sets and the excluded grid theorem. (English) Zbl 0949.05075
In their work on graph minors, Robertson and Seymour prove that the class of graphs without a fixed minor $$X$$ has bounded tree-width if and only if $$X$$ is planar. This is quickly seen to be equivalent to the result that for every $$r$$ there is a $$k$$ such that every graph of tree-width at least $$k$$ has an $$r \times r$$ grid minor. The authors give a new short proof of this excluded grid theorem.
The authors also propose a simple obstruction to small tree-width. A set $$X$$ of at least $$k$$ vertices is $$k$$-connected in a graph $$G$$ if every pair of subsets of $$X$$ of size $$j \leq k$$ are joined by $$j$$ disjoint paths. The authors show that a graph has small tree-width if and only if it has no large highly connected sets of vertices.
This work is a nice contribution to the growing literature on graph minors.

##### MSC:
 05C83 Graph minors
##### Keywords:
graph minors; excluded grid theorem; tree-width; connected sets
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##### References:
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