SMRI Seminar: Wood -- Graph Product Structure: Theory and Applications

SMRI Seminar 

Speaker: David Wood, Monash University 

Abstract: Graph product structure theory describes graphs in complicated classes as
subgraph s of products of simple tree-like graphs.  There has been an explosion of
interest in this field since 2019, when the speaker and his colleagues proved that every
planar graph is contained in the product of a tree-like graph and a path.  

This result opened up a new research direction, and has been the key tool in solving a
number of longstanding open problems.  This talk will introduce graph product structure
theory, describing the main results and several of the applications.  Only elementary
graph theory will be assumed.