In 2003 Kostochka, Pelsmajer, and West introduced a list analogue of equitable coloring called equitable choosability. A $k$-assignment, $L$, for a graph $G$ assigns a list, $L(v)$, of $k$ available colors to each $v \in V(G)$, and an equitable $L$-coloring of $G$ is a proper coloring, $f$, of $G$ such that $f(v) \in L(v)$ for each $v \in V(G)$ and each color class of $f$ has size at most $\lceil |V(G)|/k \rceil$. In 2018, Kaul, Mudrock, and Pelsmajer subsequently introduced the List Equitable Total Coloring Conjecture which states that if $T$ is a total graph of some simple graph, then $T$ is equitably $k$-choosable for each $k \geq \max \{χ_\ell(T), Δ(T)/2 + 2 \}$ where $Δ(T)$ is the maximum degree of a vertex in $T$ and $χ_\ell(T)$ is the list chromatic number of $T$. In this paper we verify the List Equitable Total Coloring Conjecture for subdivisions of stars and the generalized theta graph.
A $(q,t)$\emph{-tree-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a $q$-coloring of vertices of $G$ such that the subgraph induced by each color class is a forest of maximum degree at most $t.$ A $(q,\infty)$\emph{-tree-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a $q$-coloring of vertices of $G$ such that the subgraph induced by each color class is a forest. Wu, Zhang, and Li introduced the concept of \emph{equitable $(q, t)$-tree-coloring} (respectively, \emph{equitable $(q, \infty)$-tree-coloring}) which is a $(q,t)$-tree-coloring (respectively, $(q, \infty)$-tree-coloring) such that the sizes of any two color classes diff…
We confirm the equitable $Δ$-coloring conjecture for interval graphs and establish the monotonicity of equitable colorability for them. We further obtain results on equitable colorability about square (or Cartesian) and cross (or direct) products of graphs.
A $q$-\emph{equitable coloring} of a graph $G$ is a proper $q$-coloring such that the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most one. In contrast with ordinary coloring, a graph may have an equitable $q$-coloring but has no equitable $(q+1)$-coloring. The \emph{equitable chromatic threshold} is the minimum $p$ such that $G$ has an equitable $q$-coloring for every $q\geq p.$ In this paper, we establish the notion of $p(q: n_1,\ldots, n_k)$ which can be computed in linear-time and prove the following. Assume that $K_{n_1,\ldots,n_k}$ has an equitable $q$-coloring. Then $p(q: n_1,\ldots, n_…
Let $r \geqslant 0$ and $k \geqslant 1$ be integers. We say that a graph $G$ has an $r$-equitable $k$-coloring if there exists a proper $k$-coloring of $G$ such that the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most $r$. The least $k$ such that a graph $G$ has an $r$-equitable $k$-coloring is denoted by $χ_{r=} (G)$, and the least $n$ such that a graph $G$ has an $r$-equitable $k$-coloring for all $k \geqslant n$ is denoted by $χ^*_{r=} (G)$. In this paper, we propose a necessary and sufficient condition for a complete multipartite graph $G$ to have an $r$-equitable $k$-coloring, and also g…
We demonstrate that for every positive integer $Δ$, every K\_4-minor-free graph with maximum degree $Δ$ admits an equitable coloring with k colors wherek $\ge$ ($Δ$+3)/2. This bound is tight and confirms a conjecture by Zhang and Whu. We do not use the discharging method but rather exploit decomposition trees of K 4-minor-free graphs.
Let $H$ be a $k$-uniform hypergraph with $n$ vertices. A {\em strong $r$-coloring} is a partition of the vertices into $r$ parts, such that each edge of $H$ intersects each part. A strong $r$-coloring is called {\em equitable} if the size of each part is $\lceil n/r \rceil$ or $\lfloor n/r \rfloor$. We prove that for all $a \geq 1$, if the maximum degree of $H$ satisfies $Δ(H) \leq k^a$ then $H$ has an equitable coloring with $\frac{k}{a \ln k}(1-o_k(1))$ parts. In particular, every $k$-uniform hypergraph with maximum degree $O(k)$ has an equitable coloring with $\frac{k}{\ln k}(1-o_k(1))$ par…
In many practical applications the underlying graph must be as equitable colored as possible. A coloring is called equitable if the number of vertices colored with each color differs by at most one, and the least number of colors for which a graph has such a coloring is called its equitable chromatic number. We introduce a new integer linear programming approach for studying the equitable coloring number of a graph and show how to use it for improving lower bounds for this number. The two stage method is based on finding or upper bounding the maximum cardinality of an equitable color class in …
A $k$-coloring of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is called semi-equitable if there exists a partition of its vertex set into independent subsets $V_1,\ldots,V_k$ in such a way that $|V_1| \notin \{\lceil |V|/k\rceil, \lfloor |V|/k \rfloor\}$ and $||V_i|-|V_j|| \leq 1$ for each $i,j=2,\ldots,k$. The color class $V_1$ is called non-equitable. In this note we consider the complexity of semi-equitable $k$-coloring, $k\geq 4$, of the vertices of a cubic or subcubic graph $G$. In particular, we show that, given a $n$-vertex subcubic graph $G$ and constants $ε> 0$, $k \geq 4$, it is NP-complete to obtain a semi-e…
The paper deals with an extremal problem concerning equitable colorings of uniform hyper\-graph. Recall that a vertex coloring of a hypergraph $H$ is called proper if there are no monochro-matic edges under this coloring. A hypergraph is said to be equitably $r$-colorable if there is a proper coloring with $r$ colors such that the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most one. In the present paper we prove that if the number of edges $|E(H)|\leq 0.01\left(\frac{n}{\ln n}\right)^{\frac {r-1}{r}}r^{n-1}$ then the hypergraph $H$ is equitably $r$-colorable provided $r<\sqrt[5]{\ln n}$.
A $(q,r)$\emph{-tree-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a $q$-coloring of vertices of $G$ such that the subgraph induced by each color class is a forest of maximum degree at most $r.$ An \emph{equitable $(q, r)$-tree-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a $(q,r)$-tree-coloring such that the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most one. Let the \emph{strong equitable vertex $r$-arboricity} be the minimum $p$ such that $G$ has an equitable $(q, r)$-tree-coloring for every $q\geq p.$ In this paper, we find the exact value for each $va^\equiv_2(K_{m,n})$ and $va^\equiv_2(K_{l,m,n}).$
A proper vertex coloring of a graph is equitable if the sizes of color classes differ by at most 1. The equitable chromatic number of a graph $G$, denoted by $χ_=(G)$, is the minimum $k$ such that $G$ is equitably $k$-colorable. The equitable chromatic threshold of a graph $G$, denoted by $χ_=^*(G)$, is the minimum $t$ such that $G$ is equitably $k$-colorable for $k \ge t$. In this paper, we give the exact values of $χ_=(K_{m_1,..., m_r} \times K_n)$ and $χ_=^*(K_{m_1,..., m_r} \times K_n)$ for $\sum_{i = 1}^r m_i \leq n$.
The equitable coloring problem, introduced by Meyer in 1973, has received considerable attention and research. Recently, Wu et al. introduced the concept of equitable (t,k)-tree-coloring, which can be viewed as a generalization of proper equitable t-coloring. The strong equitable vertex k-arboricity of complete bipartite equipartition graphs was investigated in 2013. In this paper, we study the exact value of the strong equitable vertex 3-arboricity of complete equipartition tripartite graphs.
In 2003, Kostochka, Pelsmajer, and West introduced a list analogue of equitable coloring called equitable choosability. In this paper, we motivate and define a new list analogue of equitable coloring called proportional choosability. A $k$-assignment $L$ for a graph $G$ specifies a list $L(v)$ of $k$ available colors for each vertex $v$ of $G$. An $L$-coloring assigns a color to each vertex $v$ from its list $L(v)$. For each color $c$, let $η(c)$ be the number of vertices $v$ whose list $L(v)$ contains $c$. A proportional $L$-coloring of $G$ is a proper $L$-coloring in which each color $c \in …
An \emph{equitable coloring} of a graph is a proper vertex coloring such that the sizes of every two color classes differ by at most 1. Chen, Lih, and Wu conjectured that every connected graph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ\geq 2$ has an equitable coloring with $Δ$ colors, except when $G$ is a complete graph or an odd cycle or $Δ$ is odd and $G=K_{Δ,Δ}.$ Nakprasit proved the conjecture holds for planar graphs with maximum degree at least 9. Zhu and Bu proved that the conjecture holds for every $C_3$-free planar graph with maximum degree at least 8 and for every planar graph without $C_4$ and $C_5$…
An equitable coloring is a proper coloring of a graph such that the sizes of the color classes differ by at most one. A graph $G$ is equitably $k$-colorable if there exists an equitable coloring of $G$ which uses $k$ colors, each one appearing on either $\lfloor |V(G)|/k \rfloor$ or $\lceil |V(G)|/k \rceil$ vertices of $G$. In 1994, Fu conjectured that for any simple graph $G$, the total graph of $G$, $T(G)$, is equitably $k$-colorable whenever $k \geq \max\{χ(T(G)), Δ(G)+2\}$ where $χ(T(G))$ is the chromatic number of the total graph of $G$ and $Δ(G)$ is the maximum degree of $G$. We investig…
The equitable coloring problem, introduced by Meyer in 1973, has received considerable attention and research. Recently, Wu, Zhang and Li introduced the concept of equitable $(t,k)$-tree-coloring, which can be regarded as a generalization of proper equitable $t$-coloring. The \emph{strong equitable vertex $k$-arboricity} of $G$, denoted by ${va_k}^\equiv(G)$, is the smallest integer $t$ such that $G$ has an equitable $(t', k)$-tree-coloring for every $t'\geq t$. The exact value of strong equitable vertex $k$-arboricity of complete equipartition bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ was studied by Wu, Zhan…
A proper vertex coloring of a graph $G$ is equitable if the sizes of color classes differ by at most one. The equitable chromatic threshold $χ_{eq}^*(G)$ of $G$ is the smallest integer $m$ such that $G$ is equitably $n$-colorable for all $n\ge m$. We show that for planar graphs $G$ with minimum degree at least two, $χ_{eq}^*(G)\le 4$ if the girth of $G$ is at least $10$, and $χ_{eq}^*(G)\le 3$ if the girth of $G$ is at least $14$.
A graph is equitably $k$-colorable if its vertices can be partitioned into $k$ independent sets in such a way that the number of vertices in any two sets differ by at most one. The smallest $k$ for which such a coloring exists is known as the \emph{equitable chromatic number} of $G$ and it is denoted by $χ_{=}(G)$. In this paper the problem of determinig $χ_=$ for coronas of cubic graphs is studied. Although the problem of ordinary coloring of coronas of cubic graphs is solvable in polynomial time, the problem of equitable coloring becomes NP-hard for these graphs. We provide polynomially solv…
A graph is equitably $k$-colorable if its vertices can be partitioned into $k$ independent sets in such a way that the number of vertices in any two sets differ by at most one. The smallest $k$ for which such a coloring exists is known as the equitable chromatic number of $G$ and denoted $χ_{=}(G)$. It is known that this problem is NP-hard in general case and remains so for corona graphs. In "Equitable colorings of Cartesian products of graphs" (2012) Lin and Chang studied equitable coloring of Cartesian products of graphs. In this paper we consider the same model of coloring in the case of co…
If the vertices of a graph $G$ are colored with $k$ colors such that no adjacent vertices receive the same color and the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most one, then $G$ is said to be equitably $k$-colorable. Let $|G|$ denote the number of vertices of $G$ and $Δ=Δ(G)$ the maximum degree of a vertex in $G$. We prove that a graph $G$ of order at least 6 is equitably $Δ$-colorable if $G$ satisfies $(|G|+1)/3 \leq Δ< |G|/2$ and none of its components is a $K_{Δ+1}$.
This paper describes a new exact algorithm for the Equitable Coloring Problem, a coloring problem where the sizes of two arbitrary color classes differ in at most one unit. Based on the well known DSatur algorithm for the classic Coloring Problem, a new pruning criterion arising from equity constraints is proposed and analyzed. The good performance of the algorithm is shown through computational experiments over random and benchmark instances.
An equitable graph coloring is a proper vertex coloring of a graph G where the sizes of the color classes differ by at most one. The equitable chromatic number is the smallest number k such that G admits such equitable k-coloring. We focus on enumerative algorithms for the computation of the equitable coloring number and propose a general scheme to derive pruning rules for them: We show how the extendability of a partial coloring into an equitable coloring can be modeled via network flows. Thus, we obtain pruning rules which can be checked via flow algorithms. Computational experiments show th…
In 2003 Kostochka, Pelsmajer, and West introduced a list analogue of equitable coloring called equitable choosability. A $k$-assignment, $L$, for a graph $G$ assigns a list, $L(v)$, of $k$ available colors to each $v \in V(G)$, and an equitable $L$-coloring of $G$ is a proper coloring, $f$, of $G$ such that $f(v) \in L(v)$ for each $v \in V(G)$ and each color class of $f$ has size at most $\lceil |V(G)|/k \rceil$. Graph $G$ is said to be equitably $k$-choosable if an equitable $L$-coloring of $G$ exists whenever $L$ is a $k$-assignment for $G$. In this note we study the equitable choosability …
An \emph{equitable $(q, r)$-tree-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a $q$-coloring of $G$ such that the subgraph induced by each color class is a forest of maximum degree at most $r$ and the sizes of any two color classes differ by at most $1.$ Let the \emph{strong equitable vertex $r$-arboricity} of a graph $G,$ denoted by $va^\equiv_r (G)$, be the minimum $p$ such that $G$ has an equitable $(q, r)$-tree-coloring for every $q\geq p.$ The values of $va^\equiv_1 (K_{n,n})$ were investigated by Tao and Lin and Wu, Zhang, and Li where exact values of $va^\equiv_1 (K_{n,n})$ were found in some special ca…
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…
In this paper an improved bound on the chromatic number of the Pancake graph $P_n, n\geqslant 2$, is presented. The bound is obtained using a subadditivity property of the chromatic number of the Pancake graph. We also investigate an equitable coloring of $P_n$. An equitable $(n-1)$-coloring based on efficient dominating sets is given and optimal equitable $4$-colorings are considered for small $n$. It is conjectured that the chromatic number of $P_n$ coincides with its equitable chromatic number for any $n\geqslant 2$.
The minimum number of total independent partition sets of $V \cup E$ of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is called the \emph{total chromatic number} of $G$, denoted by $χ''(G)$. If the difference between cardinalities of any two total independent sets is at most one, then the minimum number of total independent partition sets of $V \cup E$ is called the \emph{equitable total chromatic number}, and is denoted by $χ''_=(G)$. In this paper we consider equitable total coloring of coronas of cubic graphs, $G \circ H$. It turns out that, independly on the values of equitable total chromatic number of factors $G$ a…
We recently introduced proportional choosability, a new list analogue of equitable coloring. Like equitable coloring, and unlike list equitable coloring (a.k.a. equitable choosability), proportional choosability bounds sizes of color classes both from above and from below. In this note, we show that a graph is proportionally 2-choosable if and only if it is a linear forest such that its largest component has at most 5 vertices and all of its other components have two or fewer vertices. We also construct examples that show that characterizing equitably 2-choosable graphs is still open.
In this paper, we have obtained the total chromatic as well as equitable and neighborhood sum distinguishing total chromatic numbers of some classes of the circulant graphs.
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 $G$…
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 $Δ\geq 9.818…
An equitable tree-$k$-coloring of a graph is a vertex $k$-coloring such that each color class induces a forest and the size of any two color classes differ by at most one. In this work, we show that every interval graph $G$ has an equitable tree-$k$-coloring for any integer $k\geq \lceil(Δ(G)+1)/2\rceil$, solving a conjecture of Wu, Zhang and Li (2013) for interval graphs, and furthermore, give a linear-time algorithm for determining whether a proper interval graph admits an equitable tree-$k$-coloring for a given integer $k$. For disjoint union of split graphs, or $K_{1,r}$-free interval grap…
Equitable list arboricity, introduced by Zhang in 2016, generalizes the notion of equitable list coloring by requiring the subgraph induced by each color class to be acyclic (instead of edgeless) in addition to the usual upper bound on the size of each color class. Graph $G$ is equitably $k$-list arborable if an equitable, arborable list coloring of $G$ exists for every list assignment for $G$ that associates with each vertex in $G$ a list of $k$ available colors. Zhang conjectured that any graph $G$ is equitably $k$-list arborable for each $k$ satisfying $k \geq \lceil (1+Δ(G))/2 \rceil$. We …
A proper vertex coloring of a graph is equitable if the sizes of color classes differ by at most one. The equitable chromatic number of a graph $G$, denoted by $χ_=(G)$, is the minimum $k$ such that $G$ is equitably $k$-colorable. The equitable chromatic threshold of a graph $G$, denoted by $χ_=^*(G)$, is the minimum $t$ such that $G$ is equitably $k$-colorable for $k\ge t$. We develop a formula and a linear-time algorithm which compute the equitable chromatic threshold of an arbitrary complete multipartite graph.
