Contractions of 6-connected toroidal graphs (Q885291)

Let \(\mathcal T_6\) denote the class of all \(6\)-connected (equivalently \(6\)-regular) toroidal graphs and let \(G\) belong to \(\mathcal T_6\) but not minor-minimal in \(\mathcal T_6\). Let \(G'\in \mathcal T_6\) be a proper minor of \(G\) with maximum number of vertices. It is shown that \(| V(G)| - | V(G')| = \mathrm {fw}(G)\), where \(\mathrm {fw}(G)\) denotes the face-width of the toroidal embedding of \(G\). Consequently, it is shown that the only minor-minimal graphs in \(\mathcal T_6\) are \(K_7\), \(K_8 - 4K_2\), \(K_9 - C_9\) and \(K_9 - 3K_3\).