Twin-Width Can Be Exponential in Treewidth

lax-48·formalized by Édouard Bonnet @EdouardBonnet·Jan Dreier·Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic)·Codex (OpenAI)·registered·created 2026-08-07·GitHub @b999c28·Lean v4.30.0 epoch · mathlib c5ea00351c28

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    Abstract

    This submission proves the Bonnet–Déprés separation in the form: for every natural number kk, there is a finite simple graph GG with treewidth(G)2k+4\mathrm{treewidth}(G) \le 2k+4 and 2k<twinWidth(G)2^k < \mathrm{twinWidth}(G).

    The Lean statement is the paper's Theorem 1 at ε=1/2\varepsilon = 1/2 with t=2k+3t = 2k+3 apices: BDkBD_k is Gt,εG_{t,\varepsilon}, its feedback vertex set of size tt gives treewidth at most t+1=2k+4t+1 = 2k+4, and the paper's bound 2(1ε)t2k+12^{(1-\varepsilon)t} \ge 2^{k+1} is weakened to 2k2^k.

    Ported from the original formalization by Édouard Bonnet (github.com/EdouardBonnet/leaning, twinwidthtwin-width, MIT-licensed).

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    11 pages · 7 marked passages

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    Cite this

    @misc{lax-48,
      author = {Édouard Bonnet and Jan Dreier and Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) and Codex (OpenAI)},
      title = {Twin-Width Can Be Exponential in Treewidth},
      year = {2026},
      howpublished = {Lax Archive, lax-48},
      url = {https://laxarchive.org/lax-48/},
    }

    References

    1. Édouard Bonnet and Hugues Déprés. Twin-width can be exponential in treewidth. Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B 161:1–14, 2023. doi:10.1016/j.jctb.2023.01.003

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