Wikipedia
thumb|upright=1.35|A clique-sum of two planar graphs and the Wagner graph, forming a K-minor-free graph. In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, a clique-sum is a way of combining two graphs by gluing them together at a clique, analogous to the connected sum operation in topology. If two graphs G and H each contain cliques of equal size, the clique-sum of G and H is formed from their disjoint union by identifying pairs of vertices in these two cliques to form a single shared clique, and then possibly deleting some of the clique edges. A k-clique-sum is a clique-sum in which both cliques have at most k vertices. One may also form clique-sums and k-clique-sums of more than two graphs, by repeated application of the two-graph clique-sum operation.
Different sources disagree on which edges should be removed as part of a clique-sum operation. In some contexts, such as the decomposition of chordal graphs or strangulated graphs, no edges should be removed. In other contexts, such as the SPQR-tree decomposition of graphs into their 3-vertex-connected components, all edges should be removed. And in yet other contexts, such as the graph structure theorem for minor-closed families of simple graphs, it is natural to allow the set of removed edges to be specified as part of the operation.