Similar to Euclidean geometry, graph theory is a science that studies figures that consist of points and lines. The core of Euclidean geometry is the parallel postulate, which provides the basis of the geometric invariant that the sum of the angles in every triangle equals $π$ and Cramer's rule for solving simultaneous linear equations. Since the counterpart of parallel postulate in graph theory is not known, which could be the reason that two similar problems in graph theory, namely the four color theorem (a topological invariant) and the solvability of NP-complete problems (discrete simultaneous equations), remain open to date. In this paper, based on the complex coloring of cubic graphs, we propose the reducibility postulate of the Petersen configuration to fill this gap. Comparing edge coloring with a system of linear equations, we found that the postulate of reducibility in graph theory and the parallel postulate in Euclidean geometry share some common characteristics of the plane. First, they both provide solvability conditions on two equations in the plane. Second, the two basic invariants of the plane, namely the chromatic index of bridgeless cubic plane graphs and the sum of the angles in every triangle, can be respectively deduced from them in a straightforward manner. This reducibility postulation has been verified by more than one hundred thousand instances of Peterson configurations generated by computer. Despite that, we still don't have a logical proof of this assertion. Similar to that of the parallel postulate, we tend to think that describing these natural laws by even more elementary properties of the plane is inconceivable.
The chromatic index of a cubic graph is either 3 or 4. Edge-Kempe switching, which can be used to transform edge-colorings, is here considered for 3-edge-colorings of cubic graphs. Computational results for edge-Kempe switching of cubic graphs up to order 30 and bipartite cubic graphs up to order 36 are tabulated. Families of cubic graphs of orders $4n+2$ and $4n+4$ with $2^n$ edge-Kempe equivalence classes are presented; it is conjectured that there are no cubic graphs with more edge-Kempe equivalence classes. New families of nonplanar bipartite cubic graphs with exactly one edge-Kempe equiva…
If $f:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ is a function, then let us say that $f$ is sublinear if \[\lim_{n\rightarrow +\infty}\frac{f(n)}{n}=0.\] If $G=(V,E)$ is a cubic graph and $c:E\rightarrow \{1,...,k\}$ is a proper $k$-edge-coloring of $G$, then an edge $e=uv$ of $G$ is poor (rich) in $c$, if the edges incident to $u$ and $v$ are colored with three (five) colors. An edge is abnormal if it is neither rich nor poor. The Petersen coloring conjecture of Jaeger states that any bridgeless cubic graph admits a proper 5-edge-coloring $c$, such that there is no an abnormal edge of $G$ with respect…
On bipartization of cubic graphs by removal of an independent set
本文研究了三次图的一个新问题:通过删除足够大的独立集$I$来实现三次图$Q$的二分化。它可以表示如下:\emph{Given a connected $n$-vertex tripartite cubic graph $Q=(V,E)$ with independence number $α(Q)$, does $Q$ contain an independent set $I$ of size $k$ such that $Q-I$ is bipartite?}我们感兴趣的是,$k$的值对这个问题的答案是肯定的。我们建设性地证明,如果$α(Q) \geq 4n/10$,那么答案是肯定的,每个$k$履行$\lfloor (n-α(Q))/2 \rfloor \leq k \leq α(Q)$。对于具有$α(Q)<4n/10$的三次图,是否可以构造类似的图仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。接下来,我们证明了这个问题与$α(Q)\geq 4n/10$和$k$满足不等式$\lfloor n/3 \rfloor \leq k \leq α(Q)$可以与半公平图3-着色,其中一个颜色类的大小为$k$,其余顶点诱导的子图是公平2-着色。这意味着$Q$具有$(k, \lceil(n-k)/2\rceil, \lfloor (n-k)/2 \rfloor)$类型的着色。
An injective $k$-edge-coloring of a graph $G$ is an assignment of colors, i.e. integers in $\{1, \ldots , k\}$, to the edges of $G$ such that any two edges each incident with one distinct endpoint of a third edge, receive distinct colors. The problem of determining whether such a $k$-coloring exists is called k-INJECTIVE EDGE-COLORING. We show that 3-INJECTIVE EDGE-COLORING is NP-complete, even for triangle-free cubic graphs, planar subcubic graphs of arbitrarily large girth, and planar bipartite subcubic graphs of girth~6. 4-INJECTIVE EDGE-COLORING remains NP-complete for cubic graphs. For an…
Normal $5$-edge-colorings of a family of Loupekhine snarks
在一个三次图的正常边染色中,如果关联到$u$和$v$的边的颜色集分别恰好包含三种或五种颜色,则称边$uv$为贫或富.一个图的边染色是正规的,如果图的任何边是贫边或富边。本文证明了用Loupekhine提出的方法构造的一些Snark允许有五种颜色的正常边染色。Manuel and Shanthi(2015)最近证明了本文中考虑的部分snarks的Berge-Fulkerson覆盖的存在性。由于存在五种颜色的正规边染色意味着存在Berge-Fulkerson覆盖,所以我们的主要定理可以看作是他们结果的推广。