Let $c\geq 2$ and $p\geq c$ be two integers. We will call a proper coloring of the graph $G$ a \textit{$(c,p)$-nondegenerate}, if for any vertex of $G$ with degree at least $p$ there are at least $c$ vertices of different colors adjacent to it. In our work we prove the following result, which generalizes Brook's Theorem. Let $D\geq 3$ and $G$ be a graph without cliques on $D+1$ vertices and the degree of any vertex in this graph is not greater than $D$. Then for every integer $c\geq 2$ there is a proper $(c,p)$-nondegenerate vertex $D$-coloring of $G$, where $p=(c^3+8c^2+19c+6)(c+1).$ During the primary proof, some interesting corollaries are derived.
We give a simple short proof of Brooks' theorem using only induction and greedy coloring, while avoiding issues of graph connectivity. The argument generalizes easily to some extensions of Brooks' theorem, including its variants for list coloring, signed graphs coloring and correspondence coloring.
Dvořák and Postle \cite{DP} introduced a \textit{DP-coloring} of a simple graph as a generalization of a list-coloring. They proved a Brooks' type theorem for a DP-coloring, and Bernshteyn, Kostochka and Pron \cite{BKP} extended it to a DP-coloring of multigraphs. However, detailed structure when a multigraph does not admit a DP-coloring was not specified in \cite{BKP}. In this note, we make this point clear and give the complete structure. This is also motivated by the relation to signed coloring of signed graphs.
We collect some of our favorite proofs of Brooks' Theorem, highlighting advantages and extensions of each. The proofs illustrate some of the major techniques in graph coloring, such as greedy coloring, Kempe chains, hitting sets, and the Kernel Lemma. We also discuss standard strengthenings of vertex coloring, such as list coloring, online list coloring, and Alon--Tarsi orientations, since analogues of Brooks' Theorem hold in each context. We conclude with two conjectures along the lines of Brooks' Theorem that are much stronger, the Borodin--Kostochka Conjecture and Reed's Conjecture.
We prove that for $k\geq 3$, the bound given by Brooks' theorem on the chromatic number of $k$-th powers of graphs of maximum degree $Δ\geq 3$ can be lowered by 1, even in the case of online list coloring.
We give a proof of Brooks' theorem and its list coloring extension using the algebraic method of Alon and Tarsi; this also shows that the Brooks' theorem remains valid in a more general game coloring setting.
Lovász gave a short proof of Brooks' theorem by coloring greedily in a good order. We give a different short proof by reducing to the cubic case. Then we show how to extend the result to (online) list coloring via the Kernel Lemma.
Greedy Coloring and Simple Exponential Strengthenings of Brooks-Type Theorems
University of Utah（犹他大学）；CNRS, ENS de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, LIP UMR 5668（法国国家科学研究中心，里昂高等师范学院，克洛德·贝尔纳里昂第一大学）；ENS de Lyon, LIP UMR 5668（里昂高等师范学院）
We generalize Brooks's theorem to show that if $G$ is a Borel graph on a standard Borel space $X$ of degree bounded by $d \geq 3$ which contains no $(d+1)$-cliques, then $G$ admits a $μ$-measurable $d$-coloring with respect to any Borel probability measure $μ$ on $X$, and a Baire measurable $d$-coloring with respect to any compatible Polish topology on $X$. The proof of this theorem uses a new technique for constructing one-ended spanning subforests of Borel graphs, as well as ideas from the study of list colorings. We apply the theorem to graphs arising from group actions to obtain factor of …
A vertex-coloring of a hypergraph is conflict-free, if each edge contains a vertex whose color is not repeated on any other vertex of that edge. Let $f(r, Δ)$ be the smallest integer $k$ such that each $r$-uniform hypergraph of maximum vertex degree $Δ$ has a conflict-free coloring with at most $k$ colors. As shown by Tardos and Pach, similarly to a classical Brooks' type theorem for hypergraphs, $f(r, Δ)\leq Δ+1$. Compared to Brooks' theorem, according to which there is only a couple of graphs/hypergraphs that attain the $Δ+1$ bound, we show that there are several infinite classes of uniform …
An $r$-hued coloring of a simple graph $G$ is a proper coloring of its vertices such that every vertex $v$ is adjacent to at least $\min\{r, °(v)\}$ differently colored vertices. The minimum number of colors needed for an $r$-hued coloring of a graph $G$, the $r$-hued chromatic number, is denoted by $χ_{r}(G)$. In this note we show that $$χ_r(G) \leq (r - 1)(Δ(G) + 1) + 2,$$ for every simple graph $G$ and every $r \geq 2$, which in the case when $r < Δ(G)$ improves the presently known $Δ(G)$-based upper bound on $χ_r(G)$, namely $r Δ(G) + 1$. We also discuss the existence of graphs whose $r$-h…
We consider extensions of Brooks' classic theorem on vertex coloring where some colors cannot be used on certain vertices. In particular we prove that if $G$ is a connected graph with maximum degree $Δ(G) \geq 4$ that is not a complete graph and $P \subseteq V(G)$ is a set of vertices where either (i) at most $Δ(G)-2$ colors are forbidden for every vertex in $P$, and any two vertices of $P$ are at distance at least $4$, or (ii) at most $Δ(G)-3$ colors are forbidden for every vertex in $P$, and any two vertices of $P$ are at distance at least $3$, then there is a proper $Δ(G)$-coloring of $G$ r…
Coloring a graph $G$ consists in finding an assignment of colors $c: V(G)\to\{1,\ldots,p\}$ such that any pair of adjacent vertices receives different colors. The minimum integer $p$ such that a coloring exists is called the chromatic number of $G$, denoted by $χ(G)$. We investigate the chromatic number of powers of graphs, i.e. the graphs obtained from a graph $G$ by adding an edge between every pair of vertices at distance at most $k$. For $k=1$, Brooks' theorem states that every connected graph of maximum degree $Δ\geqslant 3$ excepted the clique on $Δ+1$ vertices can be colored using $Δ$ c…
In order to solve a question on list coloring of planar graphs, Dvořák and Postle introduced the concept of so called DP-coloring, thereby extending the concept of list-coloring. DP-coloring was anaylized in detail by Bernshteyn, Kostochka, and Pron for graphs and multigraphs; they characterized DP-degree colorable multigraphs and deduced a Brooks' type result from this. The characterization of the corresponding 'bad' covers was later given by Kim and Ozeki. In this paper, the concept of DP-colorings is extended to hypergraphs having multiple (hyper-)edges. We characterize the DP-degree colora…
An equitable tree-$k$-coloring of a graph is a vertex coloring on $k$ colors so that every color class incudes a forest and the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most one.This kind of coloring was first introduced in 2013 and can be used to formulate the structure decomposition problem on the communication network with some security considerations. In 2015, Esperet, Lemoine and Maffray showed that every $d$-degenerate graph admits an equitable tree-$k$-coloring for every $k\geq 3^{d-1}$. Motivated by this result, we attempt to lower their exponential bound to a linear bound. Precisel…
We consider Kempe changes on the $k$-colorings of a graph on $n$ vertices. If the graph is $(k-1)$-degenerate, then all its $k$-colorings are equivalent up to Kempe changes. However, the sequence between two $k$-colorings that arises from the proof may be exponential in the number of vertices. An intriguing open question is whether it can be turned polynomial. We prove this to be possible under the stronger assumption that the graph has treewidth at most $k-1$. Namely, any two $k$-colorings are equivalent up to $O(kn^2)$ Kempe changes. We investigate other restrictions (list coloring, bounded …
An NP-complete coloring or homomorphism problem may become polynomial time solvable when restricted to graphs with degrees bounded by a small number, but remain NP-complete if the bound is higher. For instance, 3-colorability of graphs with degrees bounded by 3 can be decided by Brooks' theorem, while for graphs with degrees bounded by 4, the 3-colorability problem is NP-complete. We investigate an analogous phenomenon for digraphs, focusing on the three smallest digraphs H with NP-complete H-colorability problems. It turns out that in all three cases the H-coloring problem is polynomial time …
DP-coloring is a relatively new coloring concept by Dvořák and Postle and was introduced as an extension of list-colorings of (undirected) graphs. It transforms the problem of finding a list-coloring of a given graph $G$ with a list-assignment $L$ to finding an independent transversal in an auxiliary graph with vertex set $\{(v,c) ~|~ v \in V(G), c \in L(v)\}$. In this paper, we extend the definition of DP-colorings to digraphs using the approach from Neumann-Lara where a coloring of a digraph is a coloring of the vertices such that the digraph does not contain any monochromatic directed cycle…
We study the degenerate, the star and the degenerate star chromatic numbers and their relation to the genus of graphs. As a tool we prove the following strengthening of a result of Fertin et al.: If $G$ is a graph of maximum degree $Δ$, then $G$ admits a degenerate star coloring using $O(Δ^{3/2})$ colors. We use this result to prove that every graph of genus $g$ admits a degenerate star coloring with $O(g^{3/5})$ colors. It is also shown that these results are sharp up to a logarithmic factor.
A strong edge-coloring of a graph $G$ is an edge-coloring in which every color class is an induced matching, and the strong chromatic index $χ_s'(G)$ is the minimum number of colors needed in strong edge-colorings of $G$. A graph is $2$-degenerate if every subgraph has minimum degree at most $2$. Choi, Kim, Kostochka, and Raspaud (2016) showed $χ_s'(G) \leq 5Δ+1$ if $G$ is a $2$-degenerate graph with maximum degree $Δ$. In this article, we improve it to $χ_s'(G)\le 5Δ-Δ^{1/2-ε}+2$ when $Δ>4^{1/(2ε)}$ for any $0<ε<1/2$.
Two (proper) colorings of a graph are adjacent if they differ on exactly one vertex. Jerrum proved that any $(d + 2)$-coloring of any d-degenerate graph can be transformed into any other via a sequence of adjacent colorings. A result of Bonamy et al. ensures that a shortest transformation can have a quadratic length even for $d = 1$. Bousquet and Perarnau proved that a linear transformation exists for between $(2d + 2)$-colorings. It is open to determine if this bound can be reduced. In this note, we prove that it can be reduced for graphs of treewidth 2, which are 2-degenerate. There exists a…
In this paper, we show that for every graph of maximum average degree bounded away from $d$, any $(d+1)$-coloring can be transformed into any other one within a polynomial number of vertex recolorings so that, at each step, the current coloring is proper. In particular, it implies that we can transform any $8$-coloring of a planar graph into any other $8$-coloring with a polynomial number of recolorings. These results give some evidence on a conjecture of Cereceda, van den Heuvel and Johnson which asserts that any $(d+2)$ coloring of a $d$-degenerate graph can be transformed into any other one…
An $acyclic$ edge coloring of a graph is a proper edge coloring such that there are no bichromatic cycle s. The \emph{acyclic chromatic index} of a graph is the minimum number k such that there is an acyclic e dge coloring using k colors and is denoted by $a'(G)$. A graph is called 2-$degenerate$ if any of its induced subgraph has a vertex of degree at most 2. The class of 2-$degenerate graphs$ properly conta in $series$-$parallel graphs$, $outerplanar graphs$, \emph{non-regular subcubic graphs}, \emph{planar graphs of girth at least 6} and \emph{circle graphs of girth at least 5} as subclasse…
A matching $M$ in a graph $G$ is $r$-degenerate if the subgraph of $G$ induced by the set of vertices incident with an edge in $M$ is $r$-degenerate. Goddard, Hedetniemi, Hedetniemi, and Laskar (Generalized subgraph-restricted matchings in graphs, Discrete Mathematics 293 (2005) 129-138) introduced the notion of acyclic matchings, which coincide with $1$-degenerate matchings. Solving a problem they posed, we describe an efficient algorithm to determine the maximum size of an $r$-degenerate matching in a given chordal graph. Furthermore, we study the $r$-chromatic index of a graph defined as th…
We take an application of the Kernel Lemma by Kostochka and Yancey to its logical conclusion. The consequence is a sort of magical way to draw conclusions about list coloring (and online list coloring) just from the existence of an independent set incident to many edges. We use this to prove an Ore-degree version of Brooks' Theorem for online list-coloring. The Ore-degree of an edge $xy$ in a graph $G$ is $θ(xy) = d_G(x) + d_G(y)$. The Ore-degree of $G$ is $θ(G) = \max_{xy\in E(G)}θ(xy)$. We show that every graph with $θ\ge18$ and $ω\le\fracθ{2}$ is online $\left\lfloor \fracθ{2}\right\rfloor …
There are many concepts of signed graph coloring which are defined by assigning colors to the vertices of the graphs. These concepts usually differ in the number of self-inverse colors used. We introduce a unifying concept for this kind of coloring by assigning elements from symmetric sets to the vertices of the signed graphs. In the first part of the paper, we study colorings with elements from symmetric sets where the number of self-inverse elements is fixed. We prove a Brooks'-type theorem and upper bounds for the corresponding chromatic numbers in terms of the chromatic number of the under…
A {\em strong edge coloring} of a graph $G$ is a proper edge coloring in which every color class is an induced matching. The {\em strong chromatic index} $\chiup_{s}'(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of colors in a strong edge coloring of $G$. In this note, we improve a result by D{\k e}bski \etal [Strong chromatic index of sparse graphs, arXiv:1301.1992v1] and show that the strong chromatic index of a $k$-degenerate graph $G$ is at most $(4k-2) \cdot Δ(G) - 2k^{2} + 1$. As a direct consequence, the strong chromatic index of a $2$-degenerate graph $G$ is at most $6Δ(G) - 7$, which impr…
Let $f$ be a nonnegative integer valued function on the vertex set of a graph. A graph is \textbf{strictly $f$-degenerate} if each nonempty subgraph $Γ$ has a vertex $v$ such that $\mathrm{deg}_Γ(v) < f(v)$. In this paper, we define a new concept, strictly $f$-degenerate transversal, which generalizes list coloring, signed coloring, DP-coloring, $L$-forested-coloring, and $(f_{1}, f_{2}, \dots, f_{s})$-partition. A \textbf{cover} of a graph $G$ is a graph $H$ with vertex set $V(H) = \bigcup_{v \in V(G)} X_{v}$, where $X_{v} = \{(v, 1), (v, 2), \dots, (v, s)\}$; the edge set $\mathscr{M} = \big…
A smooth hypergraph property $\mathcal{P}$ is a class of hypergraphs that is hereditary and non-trivial, i.e., closed under induced subhypergraphs and it contains a non-empty hypergraph but not all hypergraphs. In this paper we examine $\mathcal{P}$-colorings of hypergraphs with smooth hypergraph properties $\mathcal{P}$. A $\mathcal{P}$-coloring of a hypergraph $H$ with color set $C$ is a function $φ:V(H) \to C$ such that $H[φ^{-1}(c)]$ belongs to $\mathcal{P}$ for all $c \in C$. Let $L: V(H) \to 2^C$ be a so called list-assignment of the hypergraph $H$. Then, a $(\mathcal{P},L)$-coloring of …
An incidence of a graph $G$ is a pair $(v,e)$ where $v$ is a vertex of $G$ and $e$ an edge incident to $v$. Two incidences $(v,e)$ and $(w,f)$ are adjacent whenever $v = w$, or $e = f$, or $vw = e$ or $f$. The incidence coloring game [S.D. Andres, The incidence game chromatic number, Discrete Appl. Math. 157 (2009), 1980-1987] is a variation of the ordinary coloring game where the two players, Alice and Bob, alternately color the incidences of a graph, using a given number of colors, in such a way that adjacent incidences get distinct colors. If the whole graph is colored then Alice wins the g…
The dichromatic number $\vecχ(D)$ of a digraph $D$ is the least number $k$ such that the vertex set of $D$ can be partitioned into $k$ parts each of which induces an acyclic subdigraph. Introduced by Neumann-Lara in 1982, this digraph invariant shares many properties with the usual chromatic number of graphs and can be seen as the natural analog of the graph chromatic number. In this paper, we study the list dichromatic number of digraphs, giving evidence that this notion generalizes the list chromatic number of graphs. We first prove that the list dichromatic number and the dichromatic number…
The \emph{slow-coloring game} is played by Lister and Painter on a graph $G$. Initially, all vertices of $G$ are uncolored. In each round, Lister marks a nonempty set $M$ of uncolored vertices, and Painter colors a subset of $M$ that is independent in $G$. The game ends when all vertices are colored. The score of the game is the sum of the sizes of all sets marked by Lister. The goal of Painter is to minimize the score, while Lister tries to maximize it. We provide strategies for Painter on various classes of graphs whose vertices can be partitioned into a bounded number of sets inducing fores…
Hajnal and Szemerédi proved that if $G$ is a finite graph with maximum degree $Δ$, then for every integer $k \geqslant Δ+1$, $G$ has a proper coloring with $k$ colors in which every two color classes differ in size at most by $1$; such colorings are called equitable. We obtain an analog of this result for infinite graphs in the Borel setting. Specifically, we show that if $G$ is an aperiodic Borel graph of finite maximum degree $Δ$, then for each $k \geqslant Δ+ 1$, $G$ has a Borel proper $k$-coloring in which every two color classes are related by an element of the Borel full semigroup of $G$…
Let $k$ and $d$ be such that $k \ge d+2$. Consider two $k$-colorings of a $d$-degenerate graph $G$. Can we transform one into the other by recoloring one vertex at each step while maintaining a proper coloring at any step? Cereceda et al. answered that question in the affirmative, and exhibited a recolouring sequence of exponential length. If $k=d+2$, we know that there exists graphs for which a quadratic number of recolorings is needed. And when $k=2d+2$, there always exists a linear transformation. In this paper, we prove that, as long as $k \ge d+4$, there exists a transformation of length …
By a graph we mean a finite undirected graph having multiple edges but no loops. Given a graph property $\mathcal{P}$, a $\mathcal{P}$-coloring of a graph $G$ with color set $C$ is a mapping $\f:V(G)\to C$ such that for each color $c\in C$ the subgraph of $G$ induced by the color class $φ^{-1}(c)$ belongs to $\mathcal{P}$. The $\mathcal{P}$-chromatic number $χ(G:\mathcal{P})$ of $G$ is the least number $k$ for which $G$ admits an $\mathcal{P}$-coloring with a set of $k$-colors. This coloring concept dates back to the late 1960s and is commonly known as generalized coloring. In the 1980s the $\…
In this paper, we aim to introduce the group version of edge coloring and list edge coloring, and prove that all 2-degenerate graphs along with some planar graphs without adjacent short cycles is group $(Δ(G)+1)$-edge-choosable while some planar graphs with large girth and maximum degree is group $Δ(G)$-edge-choosable.
Bernshteyn and Lee defined a new notion, weak degeneracy, which is slightly weaker than the ordinary degeneracy. It is proved that strictly $f$-degenerate transversal is a common generalization of list coloring, $L$-forested-coloring and DP-coloring. In this paper, we consider three classes of graphs, including planar graphs without any configuration in Fig. 2, toroidal graphs without any configuration in Fig. 5, and planar graphs without intersecting $5$-cycles. We give structural results for each class of graphs, and prove each structure is reducible for weakly $3$-degenerate and the existen…
A graph is called to be uniquely list colorable, if it admits a list assignment which induces a unique list coloring. We study uniquely list colorable graphs with a restriction on the number of colors used. In this way we generalize a theorem which characterizes uniquely 2-list colorable graphs. We introduce the uniquely list chromatic number of a graph and make a conjecture about it which is a generalization of the well known Brooks' theorem.
The equitable tree-coloring can formulate a structure decomposition problem on the communication network with some security considerations. Namely, an equitable tree-$k$-coloring of a graph is a vertex coloring using $k$ distinct colors such that every color class induces a forest and the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most one. In this paper, we show some theoretical results on the equitable tree-coloring of graphs by proving that every $d$-degenerate graph with maximum degree at most $Δ$ is equitably tree-$k$-colorable for every integer $k\geq (Δ+1)/2$ provided that $Δ\geq 9.818…
Weak degeneracy is a variation of degeneracy which shares many nice properties of degeneracy. In particular, if a graph $G$ is weakly $d$-degenerate, then for any $(d + 1)$-list assignment $L$ of $G$, one can construct an $L$-coloring of $G$ by a modified greedy coloring algorithm. It is known that planar graphs of girth 5 are 3-choosable and locally planar graphs are 5-choosable. This paper strengthens these results and proves that planar graphs of girth 5 are weakly 2-degenerate and locally planar graphs are weakly 4-degenerate.
A {\em strong $k$-edge-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a mapping from $E(G)$ to $\{1,2,\ldots,k\}$ such that every two adjacent edges or two edges adjacent to the same edge receive distinct colors. The {\em strong chromatic index} $χ_s'(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $G$ admits a strong $k$-edge-coloring. We give bounds on $χ_s'(G)$ in terms of the maximum degree $Δ(G)$ of a graph $G$. when $G$ is sparse, namely, when $G$ is $2$-degenerate or when the maximum average degree ${\rm Mad}(G)$ is small. We prove that the strong chromatic index of each $2$-degenerate graph $G$ …
Let $G$ be a connected graph with maximum degree $Δ$. Brooks' theorem states that $G$ has a $Δ$-coloring unless $G$ is a complete graph or an odd cycle. A graph $G$ is \emph{degree-choosable} if $G$ can be properly colored from its lists whenever each vertex $v$ gets a list of $d(v)$ colors. In the context of list coloring, Brooks' theorem can be strengthened to the following. Every connected graph $G$ is degree-choosable unless each block of $G$ is a complete graph or an odd cycle; such a graph $G$ is a \emph{Gallai tree}. This degree-choosability result was further strengthened to Alon--Tars…
A circular $r$-coloring of a signed graph $(G, σ)$ is an assignment $ϕ$ of points of a circle $C_r$ of circumference $r$ to the vertices of $(G, σ)$ such that for each positive edge $uv$ of $(G, σ)$ the distance of $ϕ(v)$ and $ϕ(v)$ is at least 1 and for each negative edge $uv$ the distance of $ϕ(u)$ from the antipodal of $ϕ(v)$ is at least 1. The circular chromatic number of $(G, σ)$, denoted $χ_c(G, σ)$, is the infimum of $r$ such that $(G, σ)$ admits a circular $r$-coloring. This notion is recently defined by Naserasr, Wang, and Zhu who, among other results, proved that for any signed $d$-d…
