On the treewidth of random geometric graphs and percolated grids

In this paper we study the treewidth of the random geometric graph, obtained by dropping n points onto the square [0,√n]² and connecting pairs of points by an edge if their distance is at most r=r(n). We prove a conjecture of Mitsche and Perarnau (2014) stating that, with probability going to 1 as n→∞, the treewidth of the random geometric graph is (r√n) when lim inf r>r c, where r c is the critical radius for the appearance of the giant component. The proof makes use of a comparison to standard bond percolation and with a little bit of extra work we are also able to show that, with probability tending to 1 as k→∞, the treewidth of the graph we obtain by retaining each edge of the k×k grid with probability p is (k) if p>- and (√log k) if p<-.