Generating strongly 2-connected digraphs

Abstract

We prove that there exist four operations such that given any two strongly $2$-connected digraphs $H$ and $D$ where $H$ is a butterfly-minor of $D$, there exists a sequence $D_0,\dots, D_n$ where $D_0=H$, $D_n=D$ and for every $0\leq i\leq n-1$, $D_i$ is a strongly $2$-connected butterfly-minor of $D_{i+1}$ which is obtained by a single application of one of the four operations. As a consequence of this theorem, we obtain that every strongly $2$-connected digraph can be generated from a concise family of strongly $2$-connected digraphs by using these four operations.