In a graph $G$ of maximum degree 3, let $γ(G)$ denote the largest fraction of edges that can be 3 edge-coloured. Rizzi \cite{Riz09} showed that $γ(G) \geq 1-\frac{2\strut}{\strut 3 g_{odd}(G)}$ where $g_{odd}(G)$ is the odd girth of $G$, when $G$ is triangle-free. In \cite{FouVan10a} we extended that result to graph with maximum degree 3. We show here that $γ(G) \geq 1-\frac{2 \strut}{\strut 3 g_{odd}(G)+2}$, which leads to $γ(G) \geq 15/17$ when considering graphs with odd girth at least 5, distinct from the Petersen graph.
The notion of a $δ$-minimum edge-colouring was introduced by J-L. Fouquet (in his french PhD Thesis \cite{FouPhD}). Here we present some structural properties of $δ$-minimum edge-colourings, partially taken from the above thesis. The paper serves as an auxiliary tool for another paper submitted by the authors to Graphs and Combinatorics.
In a graph $G$ of maximum degree $Δ$ let $γ$ denote the largest fraction of edges that can be $Δ$ edge-coloured. Albertson and Haas showed that $γ\geq 13/15$ when $G$ is cubic . We show here that this result can be extended to graphs with maximum degree 3 with the exception of a graph on 5 vertices. Moreover, there are exactly two graphs with maximum degree 3 (one being obviously the Petersen graph) for which $γ= 13/15$. This extends a result given by Steffen. These results are obtained by using structural properties of the so called $δ$-minimum edge colourings for graphs with maximum degree 3…
Vertex Descent is a local search algorithm which forms the basis of a wide spectrum of tabu search, simulated annealing and hybrid evolutionary algorithms for graph colouring. These algorithms are usually treated as experimental and provide strong results on established benchmarks. As a step towards studying these heuristics analytically, an analysis of the behaviour of Vertex Descent is provided. It is shown that Vertex Descent is able to find feasible colourings for several types of instances in expected polynomial time. This includes 2-colouring of paths and 3-colouring of graphs with maxim…
We show that any orientation of a graph with maximum degree three has an oriented 9-colouring, and that any orientation of a graph with maximum degree four has an oriented 69-colouring. These results improve the best known upper bounds of 11 and 80, respectively.
A proper vertex-colouring of a graph G is said to be locally identifying if for any pair u,v of adjacent vertices with distinct closed neighbourhoods, the sets of colours in the closed neighbourhoods of u and v are different. We show that any graph G has a locally identifying colouring with $2Δ^2-3Δ+3$ colours, where $Δ$ is the maximum degree of G, answering in a positive way a question asked by Esperet et al. We also provide similar results for locally identifying colourings which have the property that the colours in the neighbourhood of each vertex are all different and apply our method to …
A $k$-colouring (not necessarily proper) of vertices of a graph is called {\it acyclic}, if for every pair of distinct colours $i$ and $j$ the subgraph induced by the edges whose endpoints have colours $i$ and $j$ is acyclic. In the paper we consider some generalised acyclic $k$-colourings, namely, we require that each colour class induces an acyclic or bounded degree graph. Mainly we focus on graphs with maximum degree 5. We prove that any such graph has an acyclic $5$-colouring such that each colour class induces an acyclic graph with maximum degree at most 4. We prove that the problem of de…
Brooks' Theorem [R. L. Brooks, On Colouring the Nodes of a Network, Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc.} 37:194-197, 1941] states that every graph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ$, has a vertex-colouring with $Δ$ colours, unless $G$ is a complete graph or an odd cycle, in which case $Δ+1$ colours are required. Lovász [L. Lovász, Three short proofs in graph theory, J. Combin. Theory Ser. 19:269-271, 1975] gives an algorithmic proof of Brooks' Theorem. Unfortunately this proof is missing important details and it is thus unclear whether it leads to a linear time algorithm. In this paper we give a complete de…
A plane graph is l-facially k-colourable if its vertices can be coloured with k colours such that any two distinct vertices on a facial segment of length at most l are coloured differently. We prove that every plane graph is 3-facially 11-colourable. As a consequence, we derive that every 2-connected plane graph with maximum face-size at most 7 is cyclically 11-colourable. These two bounds are for one off from those that are proposed by the (3l+1)-Conjecture and the Cyclic Conjecture.
We study the problem of constructing a (near) random proper $q$-colouring of a simple k-uniform hypergraph with n vertices and maximum degree Δ. (Proper in that no edge is mono-coloured and simple in that two edges have maximum intersection of size one). We give conditions on q,Δso that if these conditions are satisfied, Glauber dynamics will converge in O(n\log n) time from a random (improper) start. The interesting thing here is that for k\geq 3 we can take q=o(\D).
A graph homomorphism is a vertex map which carries edges from a source graph to edges in a target graph. The instances of the Weighted Maximum H-Colourable Subgraph problem (MAX H-COL) are edge-weighted graphs G and the objective is to find a subgraph of G that has maximal total edge weight, under the condition that the subgraph has a homomorphism to H; note that for H=K_k this problem is equivalent to MAX k-CUT. Farnqvist et al. have introduced a parameter on the space of graphs that allows close study of the approximability properties of MAX H-COL. Specifically, it can be used to extend prev…
A strong edge-colouring of a graph is a proper edge-colouring where each colour class induces a matching. It is known that every planar graph with maximum degree $Δ$ has a strong edge-colouring with at most $4Δ+4$ colours. We show that $3Δ+1$ colours suffice if the graph has girth 6, and $4Δ$ colours suffice if $Δ\geq 7$ or the girth is at least 5. In the last part of the paper, we raise some questions related to a long-standing conjecture of Vizing on proper edge-colouring of planar graphs.
The anti-Ramsey number, $ar(G, H)$ is the minimum integer $k$ such that in any edge colouring of $G$ with $k$ colours there is a rainbow subgraph isomorphic to $H$, i.e., a copy of $H$ with each of its edges assigned a different colour. The notion was introduced by Erd{ö}s and Simonovits in 1973. Since then the parameter has been studied extensively in combinatorics, also the particular case when $H$ is a star graph. Recently this case received the attention of researchers from the algorithm community because of its applications in interface modelling of wireless networks. To the algorithm com…
A graph $G$ is \emph{chordless} if no cycle in $G$ has a chord. In the present work we investigate the chromatic index and total chromatic number of chordless graphs. We describe a known decomposition result for chordless graphs and use it to establish that every chordless graph of maximum degree $Δ\geq 3$ has chromatic index $Δ$ and total chromatic number $Δ+ 1$. The proofs are algorithmic in the sense that we actually output an optimal colouring of a graph instance in polynomial time.
For every fixed integer $k \geq 1$, we prove that $k$-Edge Colouring is fixed-parameter-tractable when parameterized by the number of vertices of maximum degree.
The reconfiguration graph $R_k(G)$ of the $k$-colourings of a graph~$G$ has as vertex set the set of all possible $k$-colourings of $G$ and two colourings are adjacent if they differ on exactly one vertex. We give a short proof of the following theorem of Bousquet and Perarnau (\emph{European Journal of Combinatorics}, 2016). Let $d$ and $k$ be positive integers, $k \geq d + 1$. For every $ε> 0$ and every graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and maximum average degree $d - ε$, there exists a constant $c = c(d, ε)$ such that $R_k(G)$ has diameter $O(n^c)$. Our proof can be transformed into a simple poly…
A proper edge colouring of a graph is adjacent vertex distinguishing if no two adjacent vertices see the same set of colours. Using a clever application of the Local Lemma, Hatami (2005) proved that every graph with maximum degree $Δ$ and no isolated edge has an adjacent vertex distinguishing edge colouring with $Δ+ 300$ colours, provided $Δ$ is large enough. We show that this bound can be reduced to $Δ+ 19$. This is motivated by the conjecture of Zhang, Liu, and Wang (2002) that $Δ+ 2$ colours are enough for $Δ\geq 3$.
We develop an improved bound for the chromatic number of graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ under the assumption that the number of edges spanning any neighbourhood is at most $(1-σ)\binomΔ{2}$ for some fixed $0<σ<1$. The leading term in the reduction of colours achieved through this bound is best possible as $σ\to0$. As two consequences, we advance the state of the art in two longstanding and well-studied graph colouring conjectures, the Erdős-Nešetřil conjecture and Reed's conjecture. We prove that the strong chromatic index is at most $1.772Δ^2$ for any graph $G$ with sufficiently large maximum d…
The smallest integer $k$ needed for the assignment of colors to the elements so that the coloring is proper (vertices and edges) is called the total chromatic number of a graph. Vizing and Behzed conjectured that the total coloring can be done using at most $Δ(G)+2$ colors, where $Δ(G)$ is the maximum degree of $G$. It is not settled even for planar graphs. In this paper we give a survey on total coloring of graphs.
Given a multigraph $G$ and a positive integer $t$, the distance-$t$ chromatic index of $G$ is the least number of colours needed for a colouring of the edges so that every pair of distinct edges connected by a path of fewer than $t$ edges must receive different colours. Let $π'_t(d)$ and $τ'_t(d)$ be the largest values of this parameter over the class of planar multigraphs and of (simple) trees, respectively, of maximum degree $d$. We have that $π'_t(d)$ is at most and at least a non-trivial constant multiple larger than $τ'_t(d)$. (We conjecture $\limsup_{d\to\infty}π'_2(d)/τ'_2(d) =9/4$ in p…
We analyse uniformly random proper $k$-colourings of sparse graphs with maximum degree $Δ$ in the regime $Δ< k\ln k $. This regime corresponds to the lower side of the shattering threshold for random graph colouring, a paradigmatic example of the shattering threshold for random Constraint Satisfaction Problems. We prove a variety of results about the solution space geometry of colourings of fixed graphs, generalising work of Achlioptas, Coja-Oghlan, and Molloy on random graphs, and justifying the performance of stochastic local search algorithms in this regime. Our central proof relies only on…
We give a short proof of a bound on the list chromatic number of graphs $G$ of maximum degree $Δ$ where each neighbourhood has density at most $d$, namely $χ_\ell(G) \le (1+o(1)) \fracΔ{\ln \fracΔ{d+1}}$ as $\fracΔ{d+1} \to \infty$. This bound is tight up to an asymptotic factor $2$, which is the best possible barring a breakthrough in Ramsey theory, and strengthens results due to Vu, and more recently Davies, P., Kang, and Sereni. Our proof relies on the first moment method, and adapts a clever counting argument developed by Rosenfeld in the context of non-repetitive colourings. As a final to…
A \emph{unichord} in a graph is an edge that is the unique chord of a cycle. A \emph{square} is an induced cycle on four vertices. A graph is \emph{unichord-free} if none of its edges is a unichord. We give a slight restatement of a known structure theorem for unichord-free graphs and use it to show that, with the only exception of the complete graph $K_4$, every square-free, unichord-free graph of maximum degree~3 can be total-coloured with four colours. Our proof can be turned into a polynomial time algorithm that actually outputs the colouring. This settles the class of square-free, unichor…
We call a multigraph $(k,d)$-edge colourable if its edge set can be partitioned into $k$ subgraphs of maximum degree at most $d$ and denote as $χ'_{d}(G)$ the minimum $k$ such that $G$ is $(k,d)$-edge colourable. We prove that for every integer $d$, every multigraph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ$ is $(\lceil \fracΔ{d} \rceil, d)$-edge colourable if $d$ is even and $(\lceil \frac{3Δ- 1}{3d - 1} \rceil, d)$-edge colourable if $d$ is odd and these bounds are tight. We also prove that for every simple graph $G$, $χ'_{d}(G) \in \{ \lceil \fracΔ{d} \rceil, \lceil \frac{Δ+1}{d} \rceil \}$ and characteri…
Restricted star colouring is a variant of star colouring introduced to design heuristic algorithms to estimate sparse Hessian matrices. For $k\in\mathbb{N}$, a $k$-restricted star colouring ($k$-rs colouring) of a graph $G$ is a function $f:V(G)\to{0,1,\dots,k-1}$ such that (i)$f(x)\neq f(y)$ for every edge $xy$ of G, and (ii) there is no bicoloured 3-vertex path ($P_3$) in $G$ with the higher colour on its middle vertex. We show that for $k\geq 3$, it is NP-complete to test whether a given planar bipartite graph of maximum degree $k$ and arbitrarily large girth admits a $k$-rs colouring, and …
Let $G$ be a simple undirected graph on $n$ vertices with maximum degree~$Δ$. Brooks' Theorem states that $G$ has a $Δ$-colouring unless~$G$ is a complete graph, or a cycle with an odd number of vertices. To recolour $G$ is to obtain a new proper colouring by changing the colour of one vertex. We show an analogue of Brooks' Theorem by proving that from any $k$-colouring, $k>Δ$, a $Δ$-colouring of $G$ can be obtained by a sequence of $O(n^2)$ recolourings using only the original $k$ colours unless $G$ is a complete graph or a cycle with an odd number of vertices, or $k=Δ+1$, $G$ is $Δ$-regular …
The adaptable choosability of a multigraph $G$, denoted $\mathrm{ch}_a(G)$, is the smallest integer $k$ such that any edge labelling, $τ$, of $G$ and any assignment of lists of size $k$ to the vertices of $G$ permits a list colouring, $σ$, of $G$ such that there is no edge $e = uv$ where $τ(e) = σ(u) = σ(v)$. Here we show that for a multigraph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ$ and no cycles of length 3 or 4, $\mathrm{ch}_a(G) \leq (2\sqrt{2}+o(1))\sqrt{Δ/\lnΔ}$. Under natural restrictions we can show that the same bound holds for the conflict choosability of $G$, which is a closely related parameter…
We study the problem of sampling almost uniform proper $q$-colourings in $k$-uniform simple hypergraphs with maximum degree $Δ$. For any $δ> 0$, if $k \geq\frac{20(1+δ)}δ$ and $q \geq 100Δ^{\frac{2+δ}{k-4/δ-4}}$, the running time of our algorithm is $\tilde{O}(\mathrm{poly}(Δk)\cdot n^{1.01})$, where $n$ is the number of vertices. Our result requires fewer colours than previous results for general hypergraphs (Jain, Pham, and Voung, 2021; He, Sun, and Wu, 2021), and does not require $Ω(\log n)$ colours unlike the work of Frieze and Anastos (2017).
A vertex colouring of a graph is \emph{nonrepetitive} if there is no path whose first half receives the same sequence of colours as the second half. A graph is nonrepetitively $k$-choosable if given lists of at least $k$ colours at each vertex, there is a nonrepetitive colouring such that each vertex is coloured from its own list. It is known that every graph with maximum degree $Δ$ is $cΔ^2$-choosable, for some constant $c$. We prove this result with $c=1$ (ignoring lower order terms). We then prove that every subdivision of a graph with sufficiently many division vertices per edge is nonrepe…
The diamond is the graph obtained by removing an edge from the complete graph on 4 vertices. A graph is ($P_6$, diamond)-free if it contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to a six-vertex path or a diamond. In this paper we show that the chromatic number of a ($P_6$, diamond)-free graph $G$ is no larger than the maximum of 6 and the clique number of $G$. We do this by reducing the problem to imperfect ($P_6$, diamond)-free graphs via the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem, dividing the imperfect graphs into several cases, and giving a proper colouring for each case. We also show that there is exactl…
A graph is called $P_t$-free if it does not contain the path on $t$ vertices as an induced subgraph. Let $H$ be a multigraph with the property that any two distinct vertices share at most one common neighbour. We show that the generating function for (list) graph homomorphisms from $G$ to $H$ can be calculated in subexponential time $2^{O\left(\sqrt{tn\log(n)}\right)}$ for $n=|V(G)|$ in the class of $P_t$-free graphs $G$. As a corollary, we show that the number of 3-colourings of a $P_t$-free graph $G$ can be found in subexponential time. On the other hand, no subexponential time algorithm exi…
Let $T$ be a tree on $n$ vertices and with maximum degree $Δ$. We show that for $k\geq Δ+1$ the Glauber dynamics for $k$-edge-colourings of $T$ mixes in polynomial time in $n$. The bound on the number of colours is best possible as the chain is not even ergodic for $k \leq Δ$. Our proof uses a recursive decomposition of the tree into subtrees; we bound the relaxation time of the original tree in terms of the relaxation time of its subtrees using block dynamics and chain comparison techniques. Of independent interest, we also introduce a monotonicity result for Glauber dynamics that simplifies …
The chromatic number, which refers to the minimum number of colours required to colour the vertices of graphs properly, is one of the most central notions of the graph chromatic theory. Several of its aspects of interest have been investigated in the literature, including variants for modifications of proper colourings. These variants include, notably, the achromatic number of graphs, which is the maximum number of colours required to colour the vertices of graphs properly so that each possible combination of distinct colours is assigned along some edge. The behaviours of this parameter have l…
Let $G$ be a graph with chromatic number $χ$, maximum degree $Δ$ and clique number $ω$. Reed's conjecture states that $χ\leq \lceil (1-\varepsilon)(Δ+ 1) + \varepsilonω\rceil$ for all $\varepsilon \leq 1/2$. It was shown by King and Reed that, provided $Δ$ is large enough, the conjecture holds for $\varepsilon \leq 1/130,000$. In this article, we show that the same statement holds for $\varepsilon \leq 1/26$, thus making a significant step towards Reed's conjecture. We derive this result from a general technique to bound the chromatic number of a graph where no vertex has many edges in its nei…
A colouring of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a function $c: V\rightarrow\{1,2,\ldots \}$ such that $c(u)\neq c(v)$ for every $uv\in E$. A $k$-regular list assignment of $G$ is a function $L$ with domain $V$ such that for every $u\in V$, $L(u)$ is a subset of $\{1, 2, \dots\}$ of size $k$. A colouring $c$ of $G$ respects a $k$-regular list assignment $L$ of $G$ if $c(u)\in L(u)$ for every $u\in V$. A graph $G$ is $k$-choosable if for every $k$-regular list assignment $L$ of $G$, there exists a colouring of $G$ that respects $L$. We may also ask if for a given $k$-regular list assignment $L$ of a given g…
A linearly ordered (LO) $k$-colouring of an $r$-uniform hypergraph assigns an integer from $\{1, \ldots, k \}$ to every vertex so that, in every edge, the (multi)set of colours has a unique maximum. Equivalently, for $r=3$, if two vertices in an edge are assigned the same colour, then the third vertex is assigned a larger colour (as opposed to a different colour, as in classic non-monochromatic colouring). Barto, Battistelli, and Berg [STACS'21] studied LO colourings on $3$-uniform hypergraphs in the context of promise constraint satisfaction problems (PCSPs). We show two results. First, given…
A graph is called odd (respectively, even) if every vertex has odd (respectively, even) degree. Gallai proved that every graph can be partitioned into two even induced subgraphs, or into an odd and an even induced subgraph. We refer to a partition into odd subgraphs as an odd colouring of G. Scott [Graphs and Combinatorics, 2001] proved that a graph admits an odd colouring if and only if it has an even number of vertices. We say that a graph G is k-odd colourable if it can be partitioned into at most k odd induced subgraphs. We initiate the systematic study of odd colouring and odd chromatic n…
The Glauber dynamics on the colourings of a graph is a random process which consists in recolouring at each step a random vertex of a graph with a new colour chosen uniformly at random among the colours not already present in its neighbourhood. It is known that when the total number of colours available is at least $Δ+2$, where $Δ$ is the maximum degree of the graph, this process converges to a uniform distribution on the set of all the colourings. Moreover, a well known conjecture is that the time it takes for the convergence to happen, called the mixing time, is polynomial in the size of the…
An (improper) graph colouring has "defect" $d$ if each monochromatic subgraph has maximum degree at most $d$, and has "clustering" $c$ if each monochromatic component has at most $c$ vertices. This paper studies defective and clustered list-colourings for graphs with given maximum average degree. We prove that every graph with maximum average degree less than $\frac{2d+2}{d+2} k$ is $k$-choosable with defect $d$. This improves upon a similar result by Havet and Sereni [J. Graph Theory, 2006]. For clustered choosability of graphs with maximum average degree $m$, no $(1-ε)m$ bound on the number …
Duffy et al. [C. Duffy, G. MacGillivray, and É. Sopena, Oriented colourings of graphs with maximum degree three and four, Discrete Mathematics, 342(4), p. 959--974, 2019] recently considered the oriented chromatic number of connected oriented graphs with maximum degree $3$ and $4$, proving it is at most $9$ and $69$, respectively. In this paper, we improve these results by showing that the oriented chromatic number of non-necessarily connected oriented graphs with maximum degree $3$ (resp. $4$) is at most $9$ (resp. $26$). The bound of $26$ actually follows from a general result which determin…
A strong edge colouring of a graph is an assignment of colours to the edges of the graph such that for every colour, the set of edges that are given that colour form an induced matching in the graph. The strong chromatic index of a graph $G$, denoted by $χ'_s(G)$, is the minimum number of colours needed in any strong edge colouring of $G$. A graph is said to be \emph{chordless} if there is no cycle in the graph that has a chord. Faudree, Gyárfás, Schelp and Tuza~[The Strong Chromatic Index of Graphs, Ars Combin., 29B (1990), pp.~205--211] considered a particular subclass of chordless graphs, n…
