Undirected Graphs of Entanglement 3

Abstract

Entanglement is a complexity measure of digraphs that origins in fixed-point logics. Its combinatorial purpose is to measure the nested depth of cycles in digraphs. We address the problem of characterizing the structure of graphs of entanglement at most $k$. Only partial results are known so far: digraphs for $k=1$, and undirected graphs for $k=2$. In this paper we investigate the structure of undirected graphs for $k=3$. Our main tool is the so-called \emph{Tutte's decomposition} of 2-connected graphs into cycles and 3-connected components into a tree-like fashion. We shall give necessary conditions on Tutte's tree to be a tree decomposition of a 2-connected graph of entanglement 3.