Finding large expanders in graphs: from topological minors to induced subgraphs

TL;DR

This paper establishes a reduction from finding large induced expander subgraphs to finding topological minors that are expanders, providing a constructive approach with implications for algorithms and graph structure analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a reduction technique from induced expanders to topological minors and proves that large subgraphs of expanders contain large expanders, with a constructive proof approach.

Findings

Reduction from induced expanders to topological minors.

Every large subgraph of an expander contains a large expander.

Constructive proof aids in algorithmic applications.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a structural and geometric property of graphs, namely the presence of large expanders. The problem of finding such structures was first considered by Krivelevich [SIAM J. Disc. Math. 32 1 (2018)]. Here, we show that the problem of finding a large induced subgraph that is an expander can be reduced to the simpler problem of finding a topological minor that is an expander. Our proof is constructive, which is helpful in an algorithmic setting. We also show that every large subgraph of an expander graph contains a large subgraph which is itself an expander.