Graph minors. V. Excluding a planar graph (Q1079583)

[For part I see the authors' paper ibid. 35, 39-61 (1983; Zbl 0521.05062), for part III see their paper ibid. 36, 49-64 (1984; Zbl 0548.05025), for part VI see ibid., 115-138 (1986; Zbl 0598.05042). See also their survey paper in Surveys in Combinatorics 1985, Pap. 10th Br. Combin. Conf., Glasgow/Scotl. 1985, Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 103, 153-171 (1985; Zbl 0568.05025).] Minors of graphs are obtained by contraction of subgraphs. A decomposition of a graph is a covering of both the vertices and edges by subgraphs, considered as a graph by connecting any two meeting pieces. It is shown that for each planar graph H there exists a number w such that any graph with no minor isomorphic to H admits a tree-decomposition with pieces of cardinality at most w. In fact this is proven first for H being a finite dimensional grid. As any planar graph is the minor of some such grid, the final result is obtained. Some consequences are as follows: There is no infinite family of graphs containing a planar one, and in which no graph is isomorphic to a minor of another one. Deciding whether a graph admits a fixed planar graph as a minor, is polynomially solvable. There is a characterization of planar graphs as those graphs which satisfy a property analogous to the one shown by Erdős and Posa for circuits.