Bramble (graph theory)

A bramble of order four in a 3×3 grid graph, consisting of six mutually touching connected subgraphs

In graph theory, a bramble for an undirected graph G is a family of connected subgraphs of G that all touch each other: for every pair of disjoint subgraphs, there must exist an edge in G that has one endpoint in each subgraph. The order of a bramble is the smallest size of a hitting set, a set of vertices of G that has a nonempty intersection with each of the subgraphs. Brambles may be used to characterize the treewidth of G.[1]

  1. ^ Seymour, Paul D.; Thomas, Robin (1993), "Graph searching and a min-max theorem for tree-width", Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B, 58 (1): 22–33, doi:10.1006/jctb.1993.1027, MR 1214888. In this reference, brambles are called "screens" and their order is called "thickness".