The reconfiguration graph $R_k(G)$ of the $k$-colourings of a graph $G$ contains as its vertex set the $k$-colourings of $G$ and two colourings are joined by an edge if they differ in colour on just one vertex of $G$.
We show that for each $k \geq 3$ there is a $k$-colourable weakly chordal graph $G$ such that $R_{k+1}(G)$ is disconnected. We also introduce a subclass of $k$-colourable weakly chordal graphs which we call $k$-colourable compact graphs and show that for each $k$-colourable compact graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, $R_{k+1}(G)$ has diameter $O(n^2)$. We show that this class contains all $k$-colourable co-chordal graphs and when $k = 3$ all $3$-colourable $(P_5, \overline{P_5}, C_5)$-free graphs. We also mention some open problems.
The "reconfiguration problem" for circular colourings asks, given two $(p,q)$-colourings $f$ and $g$ of a graph $G$, is it possible to transform $f$ into $g$ by changing the colour of one vertex at a time such that every intermediate mapping is a $(p,q)$-colouring? We show that this problem can be solved in polynomial time for $2\leq p/q <4$ and is PSPACE-complete for $p/q\geq 4$. This generalizes a known dichotomy theorem for reconfiguring classical graph colourings.
A clique of a graph is a maximal set of vertices of size at least 2 that induces a complete graph. A $k$-clique-colouring of a graph is a colouring of the vertices with at most $k$ colours such that no clique is monochromatic. Défossez proved that the 2-clique-colouring of perfect graphs is a $Σ_2^P$-complete problem [J. Graph Theory 62 (2009) 139--156]. We strengthen this result by showing that it is still $Σ_2^P$-complete for weakly chordal graphs. We then determine a hierarchy of nested subclasses of weakly chordal graphs whereby each graph class is in a distinct complexity class, namely $Σ…
For a graph $G$, the $k$-recolouring graph $\mathcal{R}_k(G)$ is the graph whose vertices are the $k$-colourings of $G$ and two colourings are joined by an edge if they differ in colour on exactly one vertex. We prove that for all $n \ge 1$, there exists a $k$-colourable weakly chordal graph $G$ where $\mathcal{R}_{k+n}(G)$ is disconnected, answering an open question of Feghali and Fiala. We also show that for every $k$-colourable $3K_1$-free graph $G$, $\mathcal{R}_{k+1}(G)$ is connected with diameter at most $4|V(G)|$.
For a fixed graph $H$, the reconfiguration problem for $H$-colourings (i.e. homomorphisms to $H$) asks: given a graph $G$ and two $H$-colourings $φ$ and $ψ$ of $G$, does there exist a sequence $f_0,\dots,f_m$ of $H$-colourings such that $f_0=φ$, $f_m=ψ$ and $f_i(u)f_{i+1}(v)\in E(H)$ for every $0\leq i<m$ and $uv\in E(G)$? If the graph $G$ is loop-free, then this is the equivalent to asking whether it possible to transform $φ$ into $ψ$ by changing the colour of one vertex at a time such that all intermediate mappings are $H$-colourings. In the affirmative, we say that $φ$ reconfigures to $ψ$. …
We survey results concerning reconfigurations of colourings and dominating sets in graphs. The vertices of the $k$-colouring graph $\mathcal{C}_{k}(G)$ of a graph $G$ correspond to the proper $k$-colourings of a graph $G$, with two $k$-colourings being adjacent whenever they differ in the colour of exactly one vertex. Similarly, the vertices of the $k$-edge-colouring graph $\mathcal{EC}_{k}(G)$ of $g$ are the proper $k$-edge-colourings of $G$, where two $k$-edge-colourings are adjacent if one can be obtained from the other by switching two colours along an edge-Kempe chain, i.e., a maximal two…
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…
A set of vertices in a graph is c-colorable if the subgraph induced by the set has a proper c-coloring. In this paper, we study the problem of finding a step-by-step transformation (reconfiguration) between two c-colorable sets in the same graph. This problem generalizes the well-studied Independent Set Reconfiguration problem. As the first step toward a systematic understanding of the complexity of this general problem, we study the problem on classes of perfect graphs. We first focus on interval graphs and give a combinatorial characterization of the distance between two c-colorable sets. Th…
Let $k$ and $d$ be such that $k \ge d+2$. Consider two $k$-colourings of a $d$-degenerate graph $G$. Can we transform one into the other by recolouring 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. However, Cereceda conjectured that there should exist one of quadratic length. The $k$-reconfiguration graph of $G$ is the graph whose vertices are the proper $k$-colourings of $G$, with an edge between two colourings if they differ on exactly one vertex. …
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 …
The reconfiguration graph for the $k$-colourings of a graph $G$, denoted $R_{k}(G)$, is the graph whose vertices are the $k$-colourings of $G$ and two colourings are joined by an edge if they differ in colour on exactly one vertex. For any $k$-colourable $P_4$-free graph $G$, Bonamy and Bousquet proved that $R_{k+1}(G)$ is connected. In this short note, we complete the classification of the connectedness of $R_{k+1}(G)$ for a $k$-colourable graph $G$ excluding a fixed path, by constructing a $7$-chromatic $2K_2$-free (and hence $P_5$-free) graph admitting a frozen $8$-colouring. This settles a…
Determining a graph from its reconfiguration graph
Université Clermont Auvergne（克莱蒙奥弗涅大学）；Université d’Orléans（奥尔良大学）；London School of Economics & Political Science（伦敦政治经济学院）；Université Grenoble Alpes（格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学）；Université Lyon（里昂大学）
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…
Let $k \geq 1$ be an integer. 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. A conjecture of Cereceda from 2007 asserts that for every integer $\ell \geq k + 2$ and $k$-degenerate graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, $R_{\ell}(G)$ has diameter $O(n^2)$. The conjecture has been verified only when $\ell \geq 2k + 1$. We give a simple proof that if $G$ is a planar graph on $n$ vertices, then $R_{10}(G)$ has diameter at most $n^2$. Since planar graphs…
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 …
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 the colour of exactly one vertex. Cereceda conjectured ten years ago that, for every $k$-degenerate graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, $R_{k+2}(G)$ has diameter $\mathcal{O}({n^2})$. The conjecture is wide open, with a best known bound of $\mathcal{O}({k^n})$, even for planar graphs. We improve this bound for planar graphs to $2^{\mathcal{O}({\sqrt{n}})}$. Our proof can be transformed into an algorithm that runs in $2^…
We study the following independent set reconfiguration problem, called TAR-Reachability: given two independent sets $I$ and $J$ of a graph $G$, both of size at least $k$, is it possible to transform $I$ into $J$ by adding and removing vertices one-by-one, while maintaining an independent set of size at least $k$ throughout? This problem is known to be PSPACE-hard in general. For the case that $G$ is a cograph (i.e. $P_4$-free graph) on $n$ vertices, we show that it can be solved in time $O(n^2)$, and that the length of a shortest reconfiguration sequence from $I$ to $J$ is bounded by $4n-2k$, …
A rainbow colouring of a connected graph is a colouring of the edges of the graph, such that every pair of vertices is connected by at least one path in which no two edges are coloured the same. Such a colouring using minimum possible number of colours is called an optimal rainbow colouring, and the minimum number of colours required is called the rainbow connection number of the graph. In this article, we show the following: 1. The problem of deciding whether a graph can be rainbow coloured using 3 colours remains NP-complete even when restricted to the class of split graphs. However, any spl…
For a pair of natural numbers $k, l$, a $(k,l)$-colouring of a graph $G$ is a partition of the vertex set of $G$ into (possibly empty) sets $S_1, S_2, \dots, S_k$, $C_1, C_2, \dots, C_l$ such that each set $S_i$ is an independent set and each set $C_j$ induces a clique in $G$. The $(k,l)$-colouring problem, which is NP-complete in general, has been studied for special graph classes such as chordal graphs, cographs and line graphs. Let $\hatκ(G) = (κ_0(G),κ_1(G),\dots,κ_{θ(G)-1}(G))$ and $\hatλ(G) = (λ_0(G),λ_1(G),\dots,λ_{χ(G)-1}(G))$ where $κ_l(G)$ (respectively, $λ_k(G)$) is the minimum $k$ …
The positive zero forcing number of a graph is a graph parameter that arises from a non-traditional type of graph colouring, and is related to a more conventional version of zero forcing. We establish a relation between the zero forcing and the fast-mixed searching, which implies some NP-completeness results for the zero forcing problem. For chordal graphs much is understood regarding the relationships between positive zero forcing and clique coverings. Building upon constructions associated with optimal tree covers and forest covers, we present a linear time algorithm for computing the positi…
Given a graph $G$ and two independent sets $I_s$ and $I_t$ of size $k$, the independent set reconfiguration problem asks whether there exists a sequence of $k$-sized independent sets $I_s = I_0, I_1, I_2, \ldots, I_\ell = I_t$ such that each independent set is obtained from the previous one using a so-called reconfiguration step. Viewing each independent set as a collection of $k$ tokens placed on the vertices of a graph $G$, the two most studied reconfiguration steps are token jumping and token sliding. In the token jumping variant of the problem, a single step allows a token to jump from one…
