In 1973, Erdős and Simonovits asked whether every $n$-vertex triangle-free graph with minimum degree greater than $1/3 \cdot n$ is 3-colourable. This question initiated the study of the chromatic profile of triangle-free graphs: for each $k$, what minimum degree guarantees that a triangle-free graph is $k$-colourable. This problem has a rich history which culminated in its complete solution by Brandt and Thomassé. Much less is known about the chromatic profile of $H$-free graphs for general $H$.
Triangle-free graphs are exactly those in which each neighbourhood is one-colourable. Locally bipartite graphs, first mentioned by Luczak and Thomassé, are the natural variant of triangle-free graphs in which each neighbourhood is bipartite. Here we study the chromatic profile of locally bipartite graphs. We show that every $n$-vertex locally bipartite graph with minimum degree greater than $4/7 \cdot n$ is 3-colourable ($4/7$ is tight) and with minimum degree greater than $6/11 \cdot n$ is 4-colourable. Although the chromatic profiles of locally bipartite and triangle-free graphs bear some similarities, we will see there are striking differences.
We show that there exist linear-time algorithms that compute the strong chromatic index and a maximum induced matching of tree-cographs when the decomposition tree is a part of the input. We also show that there exist efficient algorithms for the strong chromatic index of (bipartite) permutation graphs and of chordal bipartite graphs.
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.
Bicliques are complements of bipartite graphs; as such each consists of two cliques joined by a number of edges. In this paper we study algebraic aspects of the chromatic polynomials of these graphs. We derive a formula for the chromatic polynomial of an arbitrary biclique, and use this to give certain conditions under which two of the graphs have chromatic polynomials with the same splitting field. Finally, we use a subfamily of bicliques to prove the cubic case of the $α+n$ conjecture, by showing that for any cubic integer $α$, there is a natural number $n$ such that $α+n$ is a chromatic roo…
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.
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 …
The distinguishing number $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the least integer $d$ such that $G$ has a vertex labeling with $d$ labels that is preserved only by a trivial automorphism. The distinguishing chromatic number $χ_{D}(G)$ of $G$ is defined similarly, where, in addition, $f$ is assumed to be a proper labeling. Motivated by a conjecture in \cite{colins}, we prove that if $G$ is a bipartite graph of girth at least six with the maximum degree $Δ(G)$, then $χ_{D}(G)\leq Δ(G)+1$. We also obtain an upper bound for $χ_{D}(G)$ where $G$ is a graph with at most one cycle. Finally, we state a relationshi…
DP-coloring (also called correspondence coloring) is a generalization of list coloring recently introduced by Dvořák and Postle. Several known bounds for the list chromatic number of a graph $G$, $χ_\ell(G)$, also hold for the DP-chromatic number of $G$, $χ_{DP}(G)$. On the other hand, there are several properties of the DP-chromatic number that shows that it differs with the list chromatic number. In this note we show one such property. It is well known that $χ_\ell (K_{k,t}) = k+1$ if and only if $t \geq k^k$. We show that $χ_{DP} (K_{k,t}) = k+1$ if $t \geq 1 + (k^k/k!)(\log(k!)+1)$, and we…
In this paper we obtain some upper bounds for $b$-chromatic number of $K_{1,t}$ -free graphs, graphs with given minimum clique partition and bipartite graphs. These bounds are in terms of either clique number or chromatic number of graphs or biclique number for bipartite graphs. We show that all the bounds are tight.
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…
We discuss the minimal number of vertices in a graph with a large chromatic number such that each ball of a fixed radius in it has a small chromatic number. It is shown that for every graph $G$ on $\sim((n+rc)/(c+rc))^{r+1}$ vertices such that each ball of radius $r$ is properly $c$-colorable, we have $χ(G)\leq n$.
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…
Kierstead, Szemerédi, and Trotter showed that a graph with at most $\lfloor r/(2n)\rfloor^n$ vertices such that each ball of radius $r$ in it is $c$-colorable should have chromatic number at most $n(c-1)+1$. We show that this estimate is sharp in $r$. Namely, for every $n$, $r$, and $c$ we construct a graph $G$ containing $O((2rc)^{n-1}c)$ vertices such that $χ(G)\geq n(c-1)+1$, although each ball of radius $r$ in $G$ is $c$-colorable. The core idea is the construction of a graph whose neighborhood complex is homotopy equivalent to the join of neighborhood complexes of two given graphs.
We present an infinite family of 3-connected non-bipartite graphs with chromatic roots in the interval (1,2) thus resolving a conjecture of Jackson's in the negative. In addition, we briefly consider other graph classes that are conjectured to have no chromatic roots in (1,2).
In 2001, Brualdi and Hollingsworth proved that an edge-colored balanced complete bipartite graph Kn,n with a color set C = {1,2,3,..., 2n-1} has a heterochromatic spanning tree if the number of edges colored with colors in R is more than |R|^2 /4 for any non-empty subset R \subseteq C, where a heterochromatic spanning tree is a spanning tree whose edges have distinct colors, namely, any color appears at most once. In 2010, Suzuki generalized heterochromatic graphs to f-chromatic graphs, where any color c appears at most f(c). Moreover, he presented a necessary and sufficient condition for grap…
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…
Given graphs $T$ and $H$, the generalized Turán number ex$(n,T,H)$ is the maximum number of copies of $T$ in an $n$-vertex graph with no copies of $H$. Alon and Shikhelman, using a result of Erd\H os, determined the asymptotics of ex$(n,K_3,H)$ when the chromatic number of $H$ is greater than 3 and proved several results when $H$ is bipartite. We consider this problem when $H$ has chromatic number 3. Even this special case for the following relatively simple 3-chromatic graphs appears to be challenging. The suspension $\widehat H$ of a graph $H$ is the graph obtained from $H$ by adding a new v…
For any bipartite graph $H$, we determine a minimum degree threshold for a balanced bipartite graph $G$ to contain a perfect $H$-tiling. We show that this threshold is best possible up to a constant depending only on $H$. Additionally, we prove a corresponding minimum degree threshold to guarantee that $G$ has an $H$-tiling missing only a constant number of vertices. Our threshold for the perfect tiling depends on either the chromatic number $χ(H)$ or the critical chromatic number $χ_{cr}(H)$ while the threshold for the almost perfect tiling only depends on $χ_{cr}(H)$. Our results answer two …
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…
For every integer $r\ge3$ and every $\eps>0$ we construct a graph with maximum degree $r-1$ whose circular total chromatic number is in the interval $(r,r+\eps)$. This proves that (i) every integer $r\ge3$ is an accumulation point of the set of circular total chromatic numbers of graphs, and (ii) for every $Δ\ge2$, the set of circular total chromatic numbers of graphs with maximum degree $Δ$ is infinite. All these results hold for the set of circular total chromatic numbers of bipartite graphs as well.
We show that there are $k$ simple graphs whose Kronecker covers are isomorphic to the bipartite Kneser graph $H(n,k)$, and that their chromatic numbers coincide with $χ(K(n,k)) = n - 2k + 2$. We also determine the automorphism groups of these graphs.
We study the list chromatic number of the Cartesian product of any graph $G$ and a complete bipartite graph with partite sets of size $a$ and $b$, denoted $χ_\ell(G \square K_{a,b})$. We have two motivations. A classic result on the gap between list chromatic number and the chromatic number tells us $χ_\ell(K_{a,b}) = 1 + a$ if and only if $b \geq a^a$. Since $χ_\ell(K_{a,b}) \leq 1 + a$ for any $b \in \mathbb{N}$, this result tells us the values of $b$ for which $χ_\ell(K_{a,b})$ is as large as possible and far from $χ(K_{a,b})=2$. In this paper we seek to understand when $χ_\ell(G \square K_…
We prove that for every $k$ and every $\varepsilon>0$, there exists $g$ such that every graph with tree-width at most $k$ and odd-girth at least $g$ has circular chromatic number at most $2+\varepsilon$.
In this short note, we extend the result of Galluccio, Goddyn, and Hell, which states that graphs of large girth excluding a minor are nearly bipartite. We also prove a similar result for the oriented chromatic number, from which follows in particular that graphs of large girth excluding a minor have oriented chromatic number at most $5$, and for the $p$th chromatic number $χ_p$, from which follows in particular that graphs $G$ of large girth excluding a minor have $χ_p(G)\leq p+2$.
Let H be a tree. It was proved by Rodl that graphs that do not contain H as an induced subgraph, and do not contain the complete bipartite graph $K_{t,t}$ as a subgraph, have bounded chromatic number. Kierstead and Penrice strengthened this, showing that such graphs have bounded degeneracy. Here we give a further strengthening, proving that for every tree H, the degeneracy is at most polynomial in t. This answers a question of Bonamy, Pilipczuk, Rzazewski, Thomasse and Walczak.
In this article we show how to compute the chromatic quasisymmetric function of indifference graphs from the modular law introduced by Guay-Paquet. We provide an algorithm which works for any function that satisfies this law, such as unicellular LLT polynomials. When the indifference graph has bipartite complement it reduces to a planar network, in this case, we prove that the coefficients of the chromatic quasisymmetric function in the elementary basis are positive unimodal polynomials and characterize them as certain $q$-hit numbers (up to a factor). Finally, we discuss the logarithmic conca…
In this paper we strengthen a result due to Li by showing that the third bi-power of a locally finite connected bipartite graph that admits a perfect matching is Hamilton-laceable, i.e. any two vertices from different bipartition classes are endpoints of some common Hamilton arc.
In this work we study the uncountable Borel chromatic numbers, defined by Geschke (2011) as cardinal characteristics of the continuum, of low complexity graphs. We show that a strong form of locally countable graphs with compact totally disconnected set of vertices have Borel chromatic number bounded by the continuum of the ground model in the model obtained by adding $\aleph_2$ Laver reals. From this, we answer a question from Geschke and the second author (2022), and another question from Fisher, Friedman and Khomskii (2014) concerning regularity properties of subsets of the real line.
We define a class of bipartite graphs that correspond naturally with Ferrers diagrams. We give expressions for the number of spanning trees, the number of Hamiltonian paths when applicable, the chromatic polynomial, and the chromatic symmetric function. We show that the linear coefficient of the chromatic polynomial is given by the excedance set statistic.
Given a graph G and an integer k, two players take turns coloring the vertices of G one by one using k colors so that neighboring vertices get different colors. The first player wins iff at the end of the game all the vertices of G are colored. The game chromatic number χ_g(G) is the minimum k for which the first player has a winning strategy. In this paper we analyze the asymptotic behavior of this parameter for a random graph G_{n,p}. We show that with high probability the game chromatic number of G_{n,p} is at least twice its chromatic number but, up to a multiplicative constant, has the sa…
We introduce $H$-chromatic symmetric functions, $X_{G}^{H}$, which use the $H$-coloring of a graph $G$ to define a generalization of Stanley's chromatic symmetric functions. We say two graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$ are $H$-chromatically equivalent if $X_{G_1}^{H} = X_{G_2}^{H}$, and use this idea to study uniqueness results for $H$-chromatic symmetric functions, with a particular emphasis on the case $H$ is a complete bipartite graph. We also show that several of the classical bases of the space of symmetric functions, i.e. the monomial symmetric functions, power sum symmetric functions, and elementa…
We prove that any triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree at least $d$ contains a bipartite induced subgraph of minimum degree at least $d^2/(2n)$. This is sharp up to a logarithmic factor in $n$. Relatedly, we show that the fractional chromatic number of any such triangle-free graph is at most the minimum of $n/d$ and $(2+o(1))\sqrt{n/\log n}$ as $n\to\infty$. This is sharp up to constant factors. Similarly, we show that the list chromatic number of any such triangle-free graph is at most $O(\min\{\sqrt{n},(n\log n)/d\})$ as $n\to\infty$. Relatedly, we also make two conjecture…
In this paper we prove the knight move theorem for the chromatic graph cohomologies with rational coefficients introduced by L. Helme-Guizon and Y. Rong. Namely, for a connected graph G with n vertices the only non-trivial cohomology groups $H^{i,n-i}(G)$, $H^{i,n-i-1}(G)$ come in isomorphic pairs: $H^{i,n-i}(G)\cong H^{i+1,n-i-2}(G)$ for i >= 0 if G is non-bipartite, and for i > 0 if G is bipartite. As a corollary, the ranks of the cohomology groups are determined by the chromatic polynomial. At the end, we give an explicit formula for the Poincare polynomial in terms of the chromatic polynom…
The Additive Coloring Problem is a variation of the Coloring Problem where labels of $\{1,\ldots,k\}$ are assigned to the vertices of a graph $G$ so that the sum of labels over the neighborhood of each vertex is a proper coloring of $G$. The least value $k$ for which $G$ admits such labeling is called \emph{additive chromatic number} of $G$. This problem was first presented by Czerwiński, Grytczuk and Żelazny who also proposed a conjecture that for every graph $G$, the additive chromatic number never exceeds the classic chromatic number. Up to date, the conjecture has been proved for complete …
An $r$-hued coloring of a simple graph $G$ is a proper coloring of its vertices such that every vertex $v$ is adjacent to at least $\min\{r, °(v)\}$ differently colored vertices. The minimum number of colors needed for an $r$-hued coloring of a graph $G$, the $r$-hued chromatic number, is denoted by $χ_{r}(G)$. In this note we show that $$χ_r(G) \leq (r - 1)(Δ(G) + 1) + 2,$$ for every simple graph $G$ and every $r \geq 2$, which in the case when $r < Δ(G)$ improves the presently known $Δ(G)$-based upper bound on $χ_r(G)$, namely $r Δ(G) + 1$. We also discuss the existence of graphs whose $r$-h…
Various results ensure the existence of large complete bipartite graphs in properly colored graphs when some condition related to a topological lower bound on the chromatic number is satisfied. We generalize three theorems of this kind, respectively due to Simonyi and Tardos (Combinatorica, 2006), Simonyi, Tardif, and Zsbán (The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 2013), and Chen (Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 2011). As a consequence of the generalization of Chen's theorem, we get new families of graphs whose chromatic number equals their circular chromatic number and that satisf…
A graph is k-total colourable if there is an assignment of k different colours to the vertices and edges of the graph such that no two adjacent nor incident elements receive the same colour. The total chromatic number of some direct product graphs are determined. In particular, a sufficient condition is given for direct products of bipartite graphs to have total chromatic number equal to its maximum degree plus one. Partial results towards the total chromatic number of the direct product of complete graphs are also established.
Consider a graph $G$ with chromatic number $k$ and a collection of complete bipartite graphs, or bicliques, that cover the edges of $G$. We prove the following two results: \medskip \noindent $\bullet$ If the bicliques partition the edges of $G$, then their number is at least $2^{\sqrt{\log_2 k}}$. This is the first improvement of the easy lower bound of $\log_2 k$, while the Alon-Saks-Seymour conjecture states that this can be improved to $k-1$. \medskip \noindent $\bullet$ The sum of the orders of the bicliques is at least $(1-o(1))k\log_2 k$. This generalizes, in asymptotic form, a result o…
The local chromatic number of a graph was introduced by Erdős et al. [4]. In [17] a connection to topological properties of (a box complex of) the graph was established and in [18] it was shown that if a graph is strongly topologically 4-chromatic then its local chromatic number is at least four. As a consequence one obtains a generalization of the following theorem of Youngs: If a quadrangulation of the projective plane is not bipartite it has chromatic number four. The generalization states that in this case the local chromatic number is also four. Both papers [1] and [13] generalize Youngs'…
An edge labeling of a connected graph $G = (V, E)$ is said to be local antimagic if it is a bijection $f:E \to\{1,\ldots ,|E|\}$ such that for any pair of adjacent vertices $x$ and $y$, $f^+(x)\not= f^+(y)$, where the induced vertex label $f^+(x)= \sum f(e)$, with $e$ ranging over all the edges incident to $x$. The local antimagic chromatic number of $G$, denoted by $χ_{la}(G)$, is the minimum number of distinct induced vertex labels over all local antimagic labelings of $G$. In this paper, we (i) give a sufficient condition for a graph with one pendant to have $χ_{la}\ge 3$. A necessary and s…
DP-coloring (also known as correspondence coloring) is a generalization of list coloring introduced recently by Dvořák and Postle. Many known upper bounds for the list-chromatic number extend to the DP-chromatic number, but not all of them do. In this note we describe some unusual properties of DP-coloring that set it aside from list coloring. In particular, we give an example of a planar bipartite graph with DP-chromatic number $4$ and prove that the edge-DP-chromatic number of a $d$-regular graph with $d\geq 2$ is always at least $d+1$.
A circular $r$-coloring of a signed graph $(G, σ)$ is an assignment $ϕ$ of points of a circle $C_r$ of circumference $r$ to the vertices of $(G, σ)$ such that for each positive edge $uv$ of $(G, σ)$ the distance of $ϕ(v)$ and $ϕ(v)$ is at least 1 and for each negative edge $uv$ the distance of $ϕ(u)$ from the antipodal of $ϕ(v)$ is at least 1. The circular chromatic number of $(G, σ)$, denoted $χ_c(G, σ)$, is the infimum of $r$ such that $(G, σ)$ admits a circular $r$-coloring. This notion is recently defined by Naserasr, Wang, and Zhu who, among other results, proved that for any signed $d$-d…
Using a $Z_q$-generalization of a theorem of Ky Fan, we extend to Kneser hypergraphs a theorem of Simonyi and Tardos that ensures the existence of multicolored complete bipartite graphs in any proper coloring of a Kneser graph. It allows to derive a lower bound for the local chromatic number of Kneser hypergraphs (using a natural definition of what can be the local chromatic number of a hypergraph).
The \emph{chromatic number} of a directed graph $D$ is the minimum number of colors needed to color the vertices of $D$ such that each color class of $D$ induces an acyclic subdigraph. Thus, the chromatic number of a tournament $T$ is the minimum number of transitive subtournaments which cover the vertex set of $T$. We show in this paper that tournaments are significantly simpler than graphs with respect to coloring. Indeed, while undirected graphs can be altogether "locally simple" (every neighborhood is a stable set) and have large chromatic number, we show that locally simple tournaments ar…
