Reduced bandwidth: A qualitative strengthening of twin-width in minor-closed classes (and beyond)

Abstract

In a reduction sequence of a graph, vertices are successively identified until the graph has one vertex. At each step, when identifying u and v, each edge incident to exactly one of u and v is coloured red. Bonnet, Kim, Thomassé and Watrigant (2022) [19] defined the twin-width of a graph G to be the minimum integer k such that there is a reduction sequence of G in which every red graph has maximum degree at most k. For any graph parameter f, we define the reduced f of a graph G to be the minimum integer k such that there is a reduction sequence of G in which every red graph has f at most k. Our focus is on graph classes with bounded reduced bandwidth, which implies and is stronger than bounded twin-width (reduced maximum degree). We show that every proper minor-closed class has bounded reduced bandwidth, which is qualitatively stronger than an analogous result of Bonnet et al. for bounded twin-width. In many instances, we also make quantitative improvements. For example, all previous upper bounds on the twin-width of planar graphs were at least 21000. We show that planar graphs have reduced bandwidth at most 466 and twin-width at most 583. Our bounds for graphs of Euler genus γ are O(γ). Lastly, we show that fixed powers of graphs in a proper minor-closed class have bounded reduced bandwidth (irrespective of the degree of the vertices). In particular, we show that map graphs of Euler genus γ have reduced bandwidth O(γ4). Lastly, we separate twin-width and reduced bandwidth by showing that any infinite class of expanders excluding a fixed complete bipartite subgraph has unbounded reduced bandwidth, while there are bounded-degree expanders with twin-width at most 6.