Induced subdivisions and bounded expansion

Abstract

We prove that for every graph H and for every integer s, the class of graphs that do not contain K_s, K_{s,s}, or any subdivision of H as an induced subgraph has bounded expansion; this strengthens a result of Kuhn and Osthus. The argument also gives another characterization of graph classes with bounded expansion and of nowhere-dense graph classes.

8 pages, no figures