On the odd-minor variant of Hadwiger's conjecture

A K l -expansion consists of l vertex-disjoint trees, every two of which are joined by an edge. We call such an expansion odd if its vertices can be two-coloured so that the edges of the trees are bichromatic but the edges between trees are monochromatic. We show that, for every l, if a graph contains no odd K l -expansion then its chromatic number is O ( l log l ) . In doing so, we obtain a characterization of graphs which contain no odd K l -expansion which is of independent interest. We also prove that given a graph and a subset S of its vertex set, either there are k vertex-disjoint odd paths with endpoints in S, or there is a set X of at most 2 k − 2 vertices such that every odd path with both ends in S contains a vertex in X. Finally, we discuss the algorithmic implications of these results.