We study the property of H-freeness in graphs with known bounded average degree, i.e. the property of a graph not containing some graph H as a subgraph. H-freeness is one of the fundamental graph properties that has been studied in the property testing framework. Levi [Reut Levi, 2021] showed that triangle-freeness is testable in graphs of bounded arboricity, which is a superset of e.g. planar graphs or graphs of bounded degree. Complementing this result is a recent preprint [Talya Eden et al., 2024] by Eden ηl which shows that, for every r ≥ 4, C_r-freeness is not testable in graphs of bounded arboricity. We proceed in this line of research by using the r-admissibility measure that originates from the field of structural sparse graph theory. Graphs of bounded 1-admissibility are identical to graphs of bounded arboricity, while graphs of bounded degree, planar graphs, graphs of bounded genus, and even graphs excluding a fixed graph as a (topological) minor have bounded r-admissibility for any value of r [Nešetřil and Ossona de Mendez, 2012]. In this work we show that H-freeness is testable in graphs with bounded 2-admissibility for all graphs H of diameter 2. Furthermore, we show the testability of C₄-freeness in bounded 2-admissible graphs directly (with better query complexity) and extend this result to C₅-freeness. Using our techniques it is also possible to show that C₆-freeness and C₇-freeness are testable in graphs with bounded 3-admissibility. The formal proofs will appear in the journal version of this paper. These positive results are supplemented with a lower bound showing that, for every r ≥ 4, C_r-freeness is not testable for graphs of bounded (⌊r/2⌋ - 1)-admissibility. This lower bound will appear in the journal version of this paper. This implies that, for every r > 0, there exists a graph H of diameter r+1, such that H-freeness is not testable on graphs with bounded r-admissibility. These results lead us to the conjecture that, for every r > 4, and t ≤ 2r+1, C_t-freeness is testable in graphs of bounded r-admissibility, and for every r > 2, H-freeness for graphs H of diameter r is testable in graphs with bounded r-admissibility.
@InProceedings{awofeso_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2025.12, author = {Awofeso, Christine and Greaves, Patrick and Lachish, Oded and Reidl, Felix}, title = {{Results on H-Freeness Testing in Graphs of Bounded r-Admissibility}}, booktitle = {42nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2025)}, pages = {12:1--12:16}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-365-2}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2025}, volume = {327}, editor = {Beyersdorff, Olaf and Pilipczuk, Micha{\l} and Pimentel, Elaine and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2025.12}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-228378}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2025.12}, annote = {Keywords: Property Testing, Sparse Graphs, Degeneracy, Admissibility} }
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