Abstract
The study of vertex partitions of planar graphs was initiated by the Four Colour Theorem, which was conjectured in 1852, and proven in 1976. According to that theorem, one can colour the regions of any planar map by using only four colours, in such a way that any two regions sharing a border have distinct colours. In terms of graph theory, it can be reformulated this way: the vertex set of every planar graph, i.e. every graph that can be represented in the plane such that edges do not cross, can be partitioned into four sets such that no edge has its two endpoints in the same set. Such a partition is called a proper colouring of the graph.In this thesis, we look into the structure of sparse graphs, according to several notions of sparsity. On the one hand, we consider planar graphs with no small cycles, and on the other hand, we consider the graphs where every subgraph has bounded average degree.For these classes of graphs, we first look for the smallest number of vertices that can be removed such that the remaining graph is a forest, that is a graph with no cycles. That can be seen as a partition of the vertices of the graph into a set inducing a forest and a set with a bounded fraction of the vertices of the graph. The main motivation for this study is a the Albertson and Berman Conjecture (1976), which states that every planar graph admits an induced forest containing at least one half of its vertices.We also look into vertex partition of sparse graphs into two sets both inducing a subgraph with some specific prescribed properties. Exemples of such properties can be that they have no edges, or no cycles, that they have bounded degree, or that they have bounded components. These vertex partitions generalise the notion of proper colouring. We show, for different classes of sparse graphs, that every graph in those classes have some specific vertex partition. We also look into algorithmic aspects of these partitions.