Twin-Width Can Be Exponential in Treewidth

Édouard Bonnet @EdouardBonnet

draft·created 2026-07-22·/home/jan/git/lax-submissions-origin@15d7c29/twin-width-treewidth-separation·Lean v4.30.0 · mathlib c5ea00351c28

Draft — mutable and not usable as a dependency; its citation marks the draft state.

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 concept surface has three review units: the complete definition of treewidth, the complete definition of twin-width, and the separation theorem. Treewidth is phrased through tree decompositions with a bag-size bound; twin-width through contraction sequences of vertex partitions whose red degrees are derived from homogeneity in the graph, so no auxiliary state is carried alongside the partitions. Both parameters are infima of explicit sets of naturals, and the separation is stated over the canonical finite vertex types Fin n\mathrm{Fin}\ n. The proof constructs the explicit Bonnet–Déprés graph BDkBD_k in a trigraph-based source development and bridges it to the submitted concepts through the invariant that, along any contraction sequence, black pairs are exactly the complete pairs and red pairs exactly the non-homogeneous pairs.

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

Concepts

Proofs

Lax1Proofs.Main.twin_width_can_be_exponential_in_treewidthproven

proves Lax1.ExponentialSeparation.twin_width_can_be_exponential_in_treewidth assuming nothing

Self-contained proof of the Bonnet–Déprés exponential gap: for every k, the Bonnet–Déprés graph BD_k has treewidth at most 2*k + 4 while its twin-width exceeds 2^k.

Proof strategy

The source development phrases contraction sequences as trigraph state machines; the proof bridges them to the submitted partition-based sequences through the invariant that black and red edges agree with completeness and non-homogeneity in the graph, and relabels the result onto the canonical vertex type Fin n.

Attribution

Ported from Édouard Bonnet's formalization of Bonnet–Déprés, Twin-width can be exponential in treewidth (JCTB 2023).

Proof code is not displayed; the archive records each proof's checked relationship between statements.

Cite this

@misc{Lax1,
  author = {Édouard Bonnet},
  title = {Twin-Width Can Be Exponential in Treewidth},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Lax Archive, Lax1},
  note = {draft},
}

References

@article{BonnetDepres2023,
  author  = {Bonnet, {\'E}douard and D{\'e}pr{\'e}s, Hugues},
  title   = {Twin-width can be exponential in treewidth},
  journal = {Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B},
  volume  = {161},
  pages   = {1--14},
  year    = {2023},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.jctb.2023.01.003}
}