We investigate a number of coloring problems restricted to bipartite graphs with bounded diameter. First, we investigate the $k$-List Coloring, List $k$-Coloring, and $k$-Precoloring Extension problems on bipartite graphs with diameter at most $d$, proving NP-completeness in most cases, and leaving open only the List $3$-Coloring and $3$-Precoloring Extension problems when $d=3$.
Some of these results are obtained through a proof that the Surjective $C_6$-Homomorphism problem is NP-complete on bipartite graphs with diameter at most four. Although the latter result has been already proved [Vikas, 2017], we present ours as an alternative simpler one. As a byproduct, we also get that $3$-Biclique Partition is NP-complete. An attempt to prove this result was presented in [Fleischner, Mujuni, Paulusma, and Szeider, 2009], but there was a flaw in their proof, which we identify and discuss here.
Finally, we prove that the $3$-Fall Coloring problem is NP-complete on bipartite graphs with diameter at most four, and prove that NP-completeness for diameter three would also imply NP-completeness of $3$-Precoloring Extension on diameter three, thus closing the previously mentioned open cases. This would also answer a question posed in [Kratochvíl, Tuza, and Voigt, 2002].
The existence of an on-line competitive algorithm for coloring bipartite graphs remains a tantalizing open problem. So far there are only partial positive results for bipartite graphs with certain small forbidden graphs as induced subgraphs. We propose a new on-line competitive coloring algorithm for $P_9$-free bipartite graphs.
A strong edge coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper edge coloring in which each color class is an induced matching of $G$. In 1993, Brualdi and Quinn Massey proposed a conjecture that every bipartite graph without $4$-cycles and with the maximum degrees of the two partite sets $2$ and $Δ$ admits a strong edge coloring with at most $Δ+2$ colors. We prove that this conjecture holds for such graphs with $Δ=3$. We also confirm the conjecture proposed by Faudree et al. for subcubic bipartite graphs.
List k-Coloring (Li k-Col) is the decision problem asking if a given graph admits a proper coloring compatible with a given list assignment to its vertices with colors in {1,2,..,k}. The problem is known to be NP-hard even for k=3 within the class of 3-regular planar bipartite graphs and for k=4 within the class of chordal bipartite graphs. In 2015, Huang, Johnson and Paulusma asked for the complexity of Li 3-Col in the class of chordal bipartite graphs. In this paper we give a partial answer to this question by showing that Li k-Col is polynomial in the class of convex bipartite graphs. We sh…
An edge-coloring of a graph $G$ with colors $1,\ldots,t$ is an interval $t$-coloring if all colors are used, and the colors of edges incident to each vertex of $G$ are distinct and form an interval of integers. A graph $G$ is interval colorable if it has an interval $t$-coloring for some positive integer $t$. The problem of deciding whether a bipartite graph is interval colorable is NP-complete. The smallest known examples of interval non-colorable bipartite graphs have $19$ vertices. On the other hand it is known that the bipartite graphs on at most $14$ vertices are interval colorable. In th…
DP-coloring (also known as correspondence coloring) is a generalization of list coloring introduced by Dvourák and Postle (2017). Recently, Huang et al. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2019.124562] showed that planar graphs with diameter at most two are $4$-choosable. In this paper, we will prove that planar graphs with diameter at most two are DP-$4$-colorable, which is an extension of the above result.
For a bipartite graph $G$ with parts $X$ and $Y$, an $X$-interval coloring is a proper edge coloring of $G$ by integers such that the colors on the edges incident to any vertex in $X$ form an interval. Denote by $χ'_{int}(G,X)$ the minimum $k$ such that $G$ has an $X$-interval coloring with $k$ colors. The author and Toft conjectured [Discrete Mathematics 339 (2016), 2628--2639] that there is a polynomial $P(x)$ such that if $G$ has maximum degree at most $Δ$, then $χ'_{int}(G,X) \leq P(Δ)$. In this short note, we prove this conjecture; in fact, we prove that a cubic polynomial suffices. We al…
Let $G$ be a graph and $\mathcal {S}$ be a subset of $Z$. A vertex-coloring $\mathcal {S}$-edge-weighting of $G$ is an assignment of weight $s$ by the elements of $\mathcal {S}$ to each edge of $G$ so that adjacent vertices have different sums of incident edges weights. It was proved that every 3-connected bipartite graph admits a vertex-coloring $\{1,2\}$-edge-weighting (Lu, Yu and Zhang, (2011) \cite{LYZ}). In this paper, we show that the following result: if a 3-edge-connected bipartite graph $G$ with minimum degree $δ$ contains a vertex $u\in V(G)$ such that $d_G(u)=δ$ and $G-u$ is connect…
A strong edge-coloring of a graph $G$ is an assignment of colors to edges such that every color class induces a matching. We here focus on bipartite graphs whose one part is of maximum degree at most $3$ and the other part is of maximum degree $Δ$. For every such graph, we prove that a strong $4Δ$-edge-coloring can always be obtained. Together with a result of Steger and Yu, this result confirms a conjecture of Faudree, Gyárfás, Schelp and Tuza for this class of graphs.
A translation from Russian of the work of R.R. Kamalian "Interval colorings of complete bipartite graphs and trees", Preprint of the Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Yerevan, 1989. (Was published by the decision of the Academic Council of the Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences of Armenian SSR and Yerevan State University from 7.09.1989).
An edge-coloring of a graph $G$ with colors $1,...,t$ is called an interval $t$-coloring if all colors are used, and the colors of edges incident to any vertex of $G$ are distinct and form an interval of integers. In 1991 Erdős constructed a bipartite graph with 27 vertices and maximum degree 13 which has no interval coloring. Erdős's counterexample is the smallest (in a sense of maximum degree) known bipartite graph which is not interval colorable. On the other hand, in 1992 Hansen showed that all bipartite graphs with maximum degree at most 3 have an interval coloring. In this paper we give …
In this paper, we exhibit an irreducible Markov chain $M$ on the edge $k$-colorings of bipartite graphs based on certain properties of the solution space. We show that diameter of this Markov chain grows linearly with the number of edges in the graph. We also prove a polynomial upper bound on the inverse of acceptance ratio of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm when the algorithm is applied on $M$ with the uniform distribution of all possible edge $k$-colorings of $G$. A special case of our results is the solution space of the possible completions of Latin rectangles.
A strong edge-coloring $φ$ of a graph $G$ assigns colors to edges of $G$ such that $φ(e_1)\ne φ(e_2)$ whenever $e_1$ and $e_2$ are at distance no more than 1. It is equivalent to a proper vertex coloring of the square of the line graph of $G$. In 1990 Faudree, Schelp, Gyárfás, and Tuza conjectured that if $G$ is a bipartite graph with maximum degree 3 and sufficiently large girth, then $G$ has a strong edge-coloring with at most 5 colors. In 2021 this conjecture was disproved by Lužar, Mačajová, Škoviera, and Soták. Here we give an alternative construction to disprove the conjecture.
A star edge coloring of a graph is a proper edge coloring with no $2$-colored path or cycle of length four. The star chromatic index $χ'_{st}(G)$ of $G$ is the minimum number $t$ for which $G$ has a star edge coloring with $t$ colors. We prove upper bounds for the star chromatic index of complete bipartite graphs; in particular we obtain tight upper bounds for the case when one part has size at most $3$. We also consider bipartite graphs $G$ where all vertices in one part have maximum degree $2$ and all vertices in the other part has maximum degree $b$. Let $k$ be an integer ($k\geq 1$), we pr…
Let $H_{n,(p_m)_{m=2,\ldots,M}}$ be a random non-uniform hypergraph of dimension $M$ on $2n$ vertices, where the vertices are split into two disjoint sets of size $n$, and colored by two distinct colors. Each non-monochromatic edge of size $m=2,\ldots,M$ is independently added with probability $p_m$. We show that if $p_2,\ldots,p_M$ are such that the expected number of edges in the hypergraph is at least $dn\ln n$, for some $d>0$ sufficiently large, then with probability $(1-o(1))$, one can find a proper 2-coloring of $H_{n,(p_m)_{m=2,\ldots,M}}$ in polynomial time. We present a polynomial tim…
In spite of the extensive studies of the 3-coloring problem with respect to several basic parameters, the complexity status of the 3-coloring problem on graphs with small diameter, i.e. with diameter 2 or 3, has been a longstanding and challenging open question. For graphs with diameter 2 we provide the first subexponential algorithm with complexity $2^{O(\sqrt{n\log n})}$, which is asymptotically the same as the currently best known time complexity for the graph isomorphism (GI) problem. Moreover, we prove that the graph isomorphism problem on 3-colorable graphs with diameter 2 is GI-complete…
A conjecture of Alon, Krivelevich, and Sudakov states that, for any graph $F$, there is a constant $c_F > 0$ such that if $G$ is an $F$-free graph of maximum degree $Δ$, then $χ(G) \leq c_F Δ/ \logΔ$. Alon, Krivelevich, and Sudakov verified this conjecture for a class of graphs $F$ that includes all bipartite graphs. Moreover, it follows from recent work by Davies, Kang, Pirot, and Sereni that if $G$ is $K_{t,t}$-free, then $χ(G) \leq (t + o(1)) Δ/ \logΔ$ as $Δ\to \infty$. We improve this bound to $(1+o(1)) Δ/\log Δ$, making the constant factor independent of $t$. We further extend our result …
For spin systems, such as the $q$-colorings and independent-set models, approximating the partition function in the so-called non-uniqueness region, where the model exhibits long-range correlations, is typically computationally hard for bounded-degree graphs. We present new algorithmic results for approximating the partition function and sampling from the Gibbs distribution for spin systems in the non-uniqueness region on random regular bipartite graphs. We give an $\mathsf{FPRAS}$ for counting $q$-colorings for even $q=O\big(\tfracΔ{\logΔ}\big)$ on almost every $Δ$-regular bipartite graph. Th…
Total dominator total coloring of a graph is a total coloring of the graph such that each object of the graph is adjacent or incident to every object of some color class. The minimum namber of the color classes of a total dominator total coloring of a graph is called the total dominator total chromatic number of the graph. Here, we will find the total dominator chromatic numbers of wheels, complete bipartite graphs and complete graphs.
An edge-coloring of a graph $G$ with natural numbers is called a sum edge-coloring if the colors of edges incident to any vertex of $G$ are distinct and the sum of the colors of the edges of $G$ is minimum. The edge-chromatic sum of a graph $G$ is the sum of the colors of edges in a sum edge-coloring of $G$. It is known that the problem of finding the edge-chromatic sum of an $r$-regular ($r\geq 3$) graph is $NP$-complete. In this paper we give a polynomial time $(1+\frac{2r}{(r+1)^{2}})$-approximation algorithm for the edge-chromatic sum problem on $r$-regular graphs for $r\geq 3$. Also, it i…
Given a system $(G_1, \ldots ,G_m)$ of graphs on the same vertex set $V$, a cooperative coloring is a choice of vertex sets $I_1, \ldots ,I_m$, such that $I_j$ is independent in $G_j$ and $\bigcup_{j=1}^{m}I_j = V$. For a class $\mathcal{G}$ of graphs, let $m_{\mathcal{G}}(d)$ be the minimal $m$ such that every $m$ graphs from $\mathcal{G}$ with maximum degree $d$ have a cooperative coloring. We prove that $Ω(\log\log d) \le m_\mathcal{T}(d) \le O(\log d)$ and $Ω(\log d)\le m_\mathcal{B}(d) \le O(d/\log d)$, where $\mathcal{T}$ is the class of trees and $\mathcal{B}$ is the class of bipartite …
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 $va^\equiv_2(K_{l,m,n}).$
Let $f:V \rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ be a function on the vertex set of the graph $G=(V,E)$. The graph $G$ is {\em $f$-choosable} if for every collection of lists with list sizes specified by $f$ there is a proper coloring using colors from the lists. The sum choice number, $χ_{sc}(G)$, is the minimum of $\sum f(v)$, over all functions $f$ such that $G$ is $f$-choosable. It is known (Alon 1993, 2000) that if $G$ has average degree $d$, then the usual choice number $χ_\ell(G)$ is at least $Ω(\log d)$, so they grow simultaneously. In this paper we show that $χ_{sc}(G)/|V(G)|$ can be bounded while th…
The square $G^2$ of a graph $G$ is the graph defined on $V(G)$ such that two vertices $u$ and $v$ are adjacent in $G^2$ if the distance between $u$ and $v$ in $G$ is at most 2. Let $χ(H)$ and $χ_{\ell}(H)$ be the chromatic number and the list chromatic number of $H$, respectively. A graph $H$ is called {\em chromatic-choosable} if $χ_{\ell} (H) = χ(H)$. It is an interesting problem to find graphs that are chromatic-choosable. Motivated by the List Total Coloring Conjecture, Kostochka and Woodall (2001) proposed the List Square Coloring Conjecture which states that $G^2$ is chromatic-choosable …
A packing $k$-coloring for some integer $k$ of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a mapping $φ:V\to\{1,\ldots,k\}$ such that any two vertices $u, v$ of color $φ(u)=φ(v)$ are in distance at least $φ(u)+1$. This concept is motivated by frequency assignment problems. The \emph{packing chromatic number} of $G$ is the smallest $k$ such that there exists a packing $k$-coloring of $G$. Fiala and Golovach showed that determining the packing chromatic number for chordal graphs is \NP-complete for diameter exactly 5. While the problem is easy to solve for diameter 2, we show \NP-completeness for any diameter at least…
A proper edge $t$-coloring of a graph $G$ is a coloring of edges of $G$ with colors $1,2,...,t$ such that all colors are used, and no two adjacent edges receive the same color. The set of colors of edges incident with a vertex $x$ is called a spectrum of $x$. An arbitrary nonempty subset of consecutive integers is called an interval. We say that a proper edge $t$-coloring of a graph $G$ is interval in the vertex $x$ if the spectrum of $x$ is an interval. We say that a proper edge $t$-coloring $φ$ of a graph $G$ is interval on a subset $R_0$ of vertices of $G$, if for an arbitrary $x\in R_0$, $…
The notion of the circular coloring of signed graphs is a recent one that simultaneously extends both notions of the circular coloring of graphs and $0$-free coloring of signed graphs. A circular $r$-coloring of a signed graph $(G, σ)$ is to assign points of a circle of circumference $r$, $r\geq 2$, to the vertices of $G$ such that vertices connected by a positive edge are at circular distance at least $1$ and vertices connected by a negative edge are at circular distance at most $\frac{r}{2}-1$. The infimum of all $r$ for which $(G, σ)$ admits a circular $r$-coloring is said to be the circula…
Consider a graph $G$ drawn on a fixed surface, and assign to each vertex a list of colors of size at least two if $G$ is triangle-free and at least three otherwise. We prove that we can give each vertex a color from its list so that each monochromatic connected subgraph has bounded weak diameter (i.e., diameter measured in the metric of the whole graph $G$, not just the subgraph). In case that $G$ has bounded maximum degree, this implies that each connected monochromatic subgraph has bounded size. This solves a problem of Esperet and Joret for planar triangle-free graphs, and extends known res…
We study bipartite distance-regular Cayley graphs with diameter three or four. We give sufficient conditions under which a bipartite Cayley graph can be constructed on the semidirect product of a group -- the part of this bipartite Cayley graph which contains the identity element -- and $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$. We apply this to the case of bipartite distance-regular Cayley graphs with diameter three, and consider cases where the sufficient conditions are not satisfied for some specific groups such as the dihedral group. We also extend a result by Miklavič and Potočnik that relates difference sets to …
An acyclic edge-coloring of a graph is a proper edge-coloring without bichromatic ($2$-colored) cycles. The acyclic chromatic index of a graph $G$, denoted by $a'(G)$, is the least integer $k$ such that $G$ admits an acyclic edge-coloring using $k$ colors. Let $Δ= Δ(G)$ denote the maximum degree of a vertex in a graph $G$. A complete bipartite graph with $n$ vertices on each side is denoted by $K_{n,n}$. Basavaraju, Chandran and Kummini proved that $a'(K_{n,n}) \ge n+2 = Δ+ 2$ when $n$ is odd. Basavaraju and Chandran provided an acyclic edge-coloring of $K_{p,p}$ using $p+2$ colors and thus es…
In this paper, we show that every bipartite distance-regular Cayley graph with diameter $3$ can be constructed on the semidirect product of a group and $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$, except possibly for one case.
A strong edge-coloring of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a partition of its edge set $E$ into induced matchings. We study bipartite graphs with one part having maximum degree at most $3$ and the other part having maximum degree $Δ$. We show that every such graph has a strong edge-coloring using at most $3 Δ$ colors. Our result confirms a conjecture of Brualdi and Quinn Massey ~\cite{[BQ]} for this class of bipartite graphs.
A graph is \textit{locally irregular} if the neighbors of every vertex $v$ have degrees distinct from the degree of $v$. \textit{locally irregular edge-coloring} of a graph $G$ is an (improper) edge-coloring such that the graph induced on the edges of any color class is locally irregular. It is conjectured that $3$ colors suffice for a locally irregular edge-coloring. Recently, Bensmail et al. (Bensmail, Merker, Thomassen: Decomposing graphs into a constant number of locally irregular subgraphs, {\em European J. Combin.}, 60:124--134, 2017) settled the first constant upper bound for the proble…
In this paper we study Ramsey numbers for trees of diameter 3 (bistars) vs., respectively, trees of diameter 2 (stars), complete graphs, and many complete graphs. In the case of bistars vs. many complete graphs, we determine this number exactly as a function of the Ramsey number for the complete graphs. We also determine the order of growth of the bipartite $k$-color Ramsey number for a bistar.
Gyárfás and Lehel and independently Faudree and Schelp proved that in any 2-coloring of the edges of $K_{n,n}$ there exists a monochromatic path on at least $2\lceil n/2\rceil$ vertices, and this is tight. We prove a stability version of this result which holds even if the host graph is not complete; that is, if $G$ is a balanced bipartite graph on $2n$ vertices with minimum degree at least $(3/4+o(1))n$, then in every 2-coloring of the edges of $G$, either there exists a monochromatic cycle on at least $(1+o(1))n$ vertices, or the coloring of $G$ is close to an extremal coloring -- in which c…
A proper edge coloring of a graph $G$ with colors $1,2,\dots,t$ is called a \emph{cyclic interval $t$-coloring} if for each vertex $v$ of $G$ the edges incident to $v$ are colored by consecutive colors, under the condition that color $1$ is considered as consecutive to color $t$. We prove that a bipartite graph $G$ with even maximum degree $Δ(G)\geq 4$ admits a cyclic interval $Δ(G)$-coloring if for every vertex $v$ the degree $d_G(v)$ satisfies either $d_G(v)\geq Δ(G)-2$ or $d_G(v)\leq 2$. We also prove that every Eulerian bipartite graph $G$ with maximum degree at most $8$ has a cyclic inter…
We consider the bipartite version of the {\it degree/diameter problem}, namely, given natural numbers $d\ge2$ and $D\ge2$, find the maximum number $\N^b(d,D)$ of vertices in a bipartite graph of maximum degree $d$ and diameter $D$. In this context, the bipartite Moore bound $\M^b(d,D)$ represents a general upper bound for $\N^b(d,D)$. Bipartite graphs of order $\M^b(d,D)$ are very rare, and determining $\N^b(d,D)$ still remains an open problem for most $(d,D)$ pairs. This paper is a follow-up to our earlier paper \cite{FPV12}, where a study on bipartite $(d,D,-4)$-graphs (that is, bipartite gr…
The reconfiguration graph $R_k(G)$ for the $k$-colorings of a graph $G$ has as vertex set the set of all possible proper $k$-colorings of $G$ and two colorings are adjacent if they differ in the color of exactly one vertex. A result of Bousquet and Perarnau (2016) regarding graphs of bounded degeneracy implies that if $G$ is a planar graph with $n$ vertices, then $R_{12}(G)$ has diameter at most $6n$. We improve on the number of colors, showing that $R_{10}(G)$ has diameter at most $8n$ for every planar graph $G$ with $n$ vertices.
The strong geodetic problem is a recent variation of the classical geodetic problem. For a graph $G$, its strong geodetic number ${\rm sg}(G)$ is the cardinality of a smallest vertex subset $S$, such that each vertex of $G$ lies on one fixed geodesic between a pair of vertices from $S$. In this paper, some general properties of the strong geodesic problem are studied, especially in connection with diameter of a graph. The problem is also solved for balanced complete bipartite graphs.
A subgraph in an edge-colored graph is multicolored if all its edges receive distinct colors. In this paper, we study the proper edge-colorings of the complete bipartite graph $K_{m,n}$ which forbid multicolored cycles. Mainly, we prove that (1) for any integer $k\geq 2$, if $n\geq 5k-6$, then any properly $n$-edge-colored $K_{k,n}$ contains a multicolored $C_{2k}$, and (2) determine the order of the properly edge-colored complete bipartite graphs which forbid multicolored $C_6$.
Gallai-colorings are edge-colored complete graphs in which there are no rainbow triangles. Within such colored complete graphs, we consider Ramsey-type questions, looking for specified monochromatic graphs. In this work, we consider monochromatic bipartite graphs since the numbers are known to grow more slowly than for non-bipartite graphs. The main result shows that it suffices to consider only $3$-colorings which have a special partition of the vertices. Using this tool, we find several sharp numbers and conjecture the sharp value for all bipartite graphs. In particular, we determine the Gal…
Maximum number of spanning trees in bipartite graphs with a given diameter
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（南京航空航天大学）；MIIT Key Laboratory of Mathematical Modelling and High Performance Computing of Air Vehicles（航空飞行器数学建模与高性能计算工信部重点实验室）；University of Niš（尼什大学）；University of Primorska（沿海大学）
An $r$-augmented tree is a rooted tree plus $r$ edges added from each leaf to ancestors. For $d,g,r\in\mathbb{N}$, we construct a bipartite $r$-augmented complete $d$-ary tree having girth at least $g$. The height of such trees must grow extremely rapidly in terms of the girth. Using the resulting graphs, we construct sparse non-$k$-choosable bipartite graphs, showing that maximum average degree at most $2(k-1)$ is a sharp sufficient condition for $k$-choosability in bipartite graphs, even when requiring large girth. We also give a new simple construction of non-$k$-colorable graphs and hyperg…
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…
The first multiplicative Zagreb index of a graph $G$ is the product of the square of every vertex degree, while the second multiplicative Zagreb index is the product of the degree of each edge over all edges. In our work, we explore the multiplicative Zagreb indices of bipartite graphs of order $n$ with diameter $d$, and sharp upper bounds are obtained for these indices of graphs in $\mathcal{B}(n,d)$, where $\mathcal{B}(n, d)$ is the set of all $n$-vertex bipartite graphs with the diameter $d$. In addition, we explore the relationship between the maximal multiplicative Zagreb indices of graph…
