Modul

After successful completion of the course, the participants should be able to present and analyse main results in Structural Graph Theory. They should be able to establish connections between graph minors and other graph parameters, give examples, and apply fundamental results to related problems.

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The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to some of the central results and methods of structural graph theory. Our main point of emphasis will be on graph minor theory and the concepts devised in Robertson and Seymour's intricate proof of the Graph Minor Theorem: in every infinite set of graphs there are two graphs such that one is a minor of the other.

Our second point of emphasis (time permitting) will be on Hadwiger's conjecture: that every graph with chromatic number at least r has a K_r minor. We shall survey what is known about this conjecture, including some very recent progress.

A solid background in the fundamentals of graph theory.