Following the recent paper which initiated the study of colour isomorphism problems for complete graphs, we obtain upper bounds for $f_2(n,H)$ for a family of graphs $H$ obtained as the $K_0$-th rooted power of a balanced rooted tree for some sufficiently large $K_0$. The proof uses the random polynomial method of Bukh. We also obtain matching lower bounds for $1$-subdivisions of the complete bipartite graph.
Kostochka and Yancey proved that every $4$-critical graph $G$ has $e(G) \geq \frac{5v(G) - 2}{3}$, and that equality holds if and only if $G$ is $4$-Ore. We show that a question of Postle and Smith-Roberge implies that every $4$-critical graph with no $(7,2)$-circular-colouring has $e(G) \geq \frac{27v(G) -20}{15}$. We prove that every $4$-critical graph with no $(7,2)$-colouring has $e(G) \geq \frac{17v(G)}{10}$ unless $G$ is isomorphic to $K_{4}$ or the wheel on six vertices. We also show that if the Gallai Tree of a $4$-critical graph with no $(7,2)$-colouring has every component isomorphic…
A $k$-bisection of a bridgeless cubic graph $G$ is a $2$-colouring of its vertex set such that the colour classes have the same cardinality and all connected components in the two subgraphs induced by the colour classes (monochromatic components in what follows) have order at most $k$. Ban and Linial conjectured that every bridgeless cubic graph admits a $2$-bisection except for the Petersen graph. A similar problem for the edge set of cubic graphs has been studied: Wormald conjectured that every cubic graph $G$ with $|E(G)| \equiv 0 \pmod 2$ has a $2$-edge colouring such that the two monochro…
A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have distinct colours. Our main result implies that, given any optimal colouring of a sufficiently large complete graph $K_{2n}$, there exists a decomposition of $K_{2n}$ into isomorphic rainbow spanning trees. This settles conjectures of Brualdi--Hollingsworth (from 1996) and Constantine (from 2002) for large graphs.
A graph is $H$-free if it does not contain an induced subgraph isomorphic to $H$. For every integer $k$ and every graph $H$, we determine the computational complexity of $k$-Edge Colouring for $H$-free graphs.
The study of symmetric configurations $v_3$ with block size 3 has a long and rich history. In this paper we consider two colouring problems which arise naturally in the study of these structures. The first of these is weak colouring, in which no block is monochromatic; the second is strong colouring, in which every block is multichromatic. The former has been studied before in relation to blocking sets. Results are proved on the possible sizes of blocking sets and we begin the investigation of strong colourings. We also show that the known $21_3$ and $22_3$ configurations without a blocking se…
For a fixed graph $H$, what is the smallest number of colours $C$ such that there is a proper edge-colouring of the complete graph $K_n$ with $C$ colours containing no two vertex-disjoint colour-isomorphic copies, or repeats, of $H$? We study this function and its generalisation to more than two copies using a variety of combinatorial, probabilistic and algebraic techniques. For example, we show that for any tree $T$ there exists a constant $c$ such that any proper edge-colouring of $K_n$ with at most $c n^2$ colours contains two repeats of $T$, while there are colourings with at most $c' n^{3…
Call a colouring of a graph \emph{distinguishing} if the only automorphism of this graph which preserves said colouring is the identity. Let $H$ be an arbitrary graph. We say that a graph $G$ is \emph{$H$-free} if $G$ does not contain an induced subgraph isomorphic to $H$. Kargul, Musiał, Pal and Gorzkowska showed that if $n$ is a natural number greater than two, then every finite connected $K_{1,n}$-free graph of order at least six admits a distinguishing edge colouring with at most $n-1$ colours. We extend this result to all locally finite connected $K_{1,n}$-free graphs of order at least si…
The Lovász Local Lemma is a powerful probabilistic technique for proving the existence of combinatorial objects. It is especially useful for colouring graphs and hypergraphs with bounded maximum degree. This paper presents a general theorem for colouring hypergraphs that in many instances matches or slightly improves upon the bounds obtained using the Lovász Local Lemma. Moreover, the theorem directly shows that there are exponentially many colourings. The elementary and self-contained proof is inspired by a recent result for nonrepetitive colourings by Rosenfeld [2020]. We apply our general t…
A proper vertex-colouring of a simple graph $G$ is said to be odd if, for every non-isolated vertex $v$ of $G$, some colour appears an odd number of times in the neighbourhood of $v$. We show that if $G$ embeds in the torus, then it admits a proper odd vertex-colouring with at most $9$ colours.
The diamond is the graph obtained by removing an edge from the complete graph on 4 vertices. A graph is ($P_6$, diamond)-free if it contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to a six-vertex path or a diamond. In this paper we show that the chromatic number of a ($P_6$, diamond)-free graph $G$ is no larger than the maximum of 6 and the clique number of $G$. We do this by reducing the problem to imperfect ($P_6$, diamond)-free graphs via the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem, dividing the imperfect graphs into several cases, and giving a proper colouring for each case. We also show that there is exactl…
We give tight upper and lower bounds on the internal energy per particle in the antiferromagnetic $q$-state Potts model on $4$-regular graphs, for $q\ge 5$. This proves the first case of a conjecture of the author, Perkins, Jenssen, and Roberts on extensions of their methods, and implies tight bounds on the antiferromagnetic Potts partition function. The zero-temperature limit gives upper and lower bounds on the number of proper $q$-colourings of $4$-regular graphs, which almost proves the case $d=4$ of a conjecture of Galvin and Tetali. For any $q \ge 5$ we prove that the number of proper $q$…
A graph $G$ has the Perfect-Matching-Hamiltonian property (PMH-property) if for each one of its perfect matchings, there is another perfect matching of $G$ such that the union of the two perfect matchings yields a Hamiltonian cycle of $G$. The study of graphs that have the PMH-property, initiated in the 1970s by Las Vergnas and Häggkvist, combines three well-studied properties of graphs, namely matchings, Hamiltonicity and edge-colourings. In this work, we study these concepts for cubic graphs in an attempt to characterise those cubic graphs for which every perfect matching corresponds to one …
We consider the following extension of the concept of adjacent strong edge colourings of graphs without isolated edges. Two distinct vertices which are at distant at most $r$ in a graph are called $r$-adjacent. The least number of colours in a proper edge colouring of a graph $G$ such that the sets of colours met by any $r$-adjacent vertices in $G$ are distinct is called the $r$-adjacent strong chromatic index of $G$ and denoted by $χ'_{a,r}(G)$. It has been conjectured that $χ'_{a,1}(G)\leqΔ+2$ if $G$ is connected of maximum degree $Δ$ and non-isomorphic to $C_5$, while Hatami proved that the…
Two colourings of a graph are orthogonal if they have the property that when two vertices are coloured with the same colour in one colouring, then those vertices receive distinct colours in the other colouring. In this paper, orthogonal colourings of Cayley graphs are discussed. Firstly, the orthogonal chromatic number of cycle graphs are completely determined. Secondly, the orthogonal chromatic number of certain circulant graphs is explored. Lastly, orthogonal colourings of product graphs and Hamming graphs are studied.
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Acadia University（阿卡迪亚大学数学与统计系）；School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of Prince Edward Island（爱德华王子岛大学数学与计算科学学院）
The Colouring problem asks whether the vertices of a graph can be coloured with at most $k$ colours for a given integer $k$ in such a way that no two adjacent vertices receive the same colour. A graph is $(H_1,H_2)$-free if it has no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H_1$ or $H_2$. A connected graph $H_1$ is almost classified if Colouring on $(H_1,H_2)$-free graphs is known to be polynomial-time solvable or NP-complete for all but finitely many connected graphs $H_2$. We show that every connected graph $H_1$ apart from the claw $K_{1,3}$ and the $5$-vertex path $P_5$ is almost classified. We als…
A graph is $(H_1,H_2)$-free for a pair of graphs $H_1,H_2$ if it contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H_1$ or $H_2$. In 2001, Král', Kratochv\'ıl, Tuza, and Woeginger initiated a study into the complexity of Colouring for $(H_1,H_2)$-free graphs. Since then, others have tried to complete their study, but many cases remain open. We focus on those $(H_1,H_2)$-free graphs where $H_2$ is $\overline{H_1}$, the complement of $H_1$. As these classes are closed under complementation, the computational complexities of Colouring and Clique Cover coincide. By combining new and known results, we ar…
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 Four Colour Theorem asserts that the vertices of every plane graph can be properly coloured with four colors. Fabrici and Göring conjectured the following stronger statement to also hold: the vertices of every plane graph can be properly coloured with the numbers 1,...,4 in such a way that every face contains a unique vertex coloured with the maximal color appearing on that face. They proved that every plane graph has such a colouring with the numbers 1,...,6. We prove that every plane graph has such a colouring with the numbers 1,...,5 and we also prove the list variant of the statement f…
The notion of a Galvin orientation of a line graph is introduced, generalizing the idea used by Galvin in his landmark proof of the list-edge-colouring conjecture for bipartite graphs. If L(G) has a proper Galvin orientation with respect to k, then it immediately implies that G is k-list-edge-colourable, but the converse is not true. The stronger property is studied in graphs of the form `bipartite plus an edge', the Petersen graph, cliques, and simple graphs without odd cycles of length 5 or longer.
For integer q>1, we derive edge q-colouring models for (i) the Tutte polynomial of a graph G on the hyperbola H_q, (ii) the symmetric weight enumerator of the set of group-valued q-flows of G, and (iii) a more general vertex colouring model partition function that includes these polynomials and the principal specialization order q of Stanley's symmetric monochrome polynomial. In the second half of the paper we exhibit a family of non-symmetric edge q-colouring models defined on k-regular graphs, whose partition functions for q >= k each evaluate the number of proper edge k-colourings of G when…
We consider the following two-player game, parametrised by positive integers $n$ and $k$. The game is played between Painter and Builder, alternately taking turns, with Painter moving first. The game starts with the empty graph on $n$ vertices. In each round Painter colours a vertex of her choice by one of the $k$ colours and Builder claims an edge between two previously unconnected vertices. Both players should maintain that during the game the graph admits a proper $k$-colouring. The game ends if either all $n$ vertices have been coloured, or Painter has no legal move. In the former case, Pa…
A \emph{dynamic colouring} of a graph is a proper colouring in which no neighbourhood of a non-leaf vertex is monochromatic. The \emph{dynamic colouring number} $χ_2(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the least number of colours needed for a dynamic colouring of $G$. Montgomery conjectured that $χ_2(G) \leq χ(G) + 2$ for all regular graphs $G$, which would significantly improve the best current upper bound $χ_2(G) \leq 2χ(G)$. In this note, however, we show that this last upper bound is sharp by constructing, for every integer $n \geq 2$, a regular graph $G$ with $χ(G) = n$ but $χ_2(G) = 2n$. In particular…
A proper vertex colouring of a graph is \emph{nested} if the vertices of each of its colour classes can be ordered by inclusion of their open neighbourhoods. Through a relation to partially ordered sets, we show that the nested chromatic number can be computed in polynomial time. Clearly, the nested chromatic number is an upper bound for the chromatic number of a graph. We develop multiple distinct bounds on the nested chromatic number using common properties of graphs. We also determine the behaviour of the nested chromatic number under several graph operations, including the direct, Cartesia…
The $k$-Strong Conflict-Free ($k$-SCF, in short) colouring problem seeks to find a colouring of the vertices of a hypergraph $H$ using minimum number of colours so that in every hyperedge $e$ of $H$, there are at least $\min\{|e|,k\}$ vertices whose colour is different from that of all other vertices in $e$. In the case of interval hypergraphs, we present an exact $P$-time algorithm for the $k$-SCF problem thus solving an open problem posed by Cheilaris et al. (2014). We achieve our results by showing that for any hypergraph a $k$-SCF colouring is a proper colouring of a related simple graph w…
A colouring of a graph G is called distinguishing if its stabiliser in Aut G is trivial. It has been conjectured that, if every automorphism of a locally finite graph moves infinitely many vertices, then there is a distinguishing 2-colouring. We study properties of random 2-colourings of locally finite graphs and show that the stabiliser of such a colouring is almost surely nowhere dense in Aut G and a null set with respect to the Haar measure on the automorphism group. We also investigate random 2-colourings in several classes of locally finite graphs where the existence of a distinguishing 2…
For graphs $G$ and $H$, an {\em $H$-colouring} of $G$ (or {\em homomorphism} from $G$ to $H$) is a function from the vertices of $G$ to the vertices of $H$ that preserves adjacency. $H$-colourings generalize such graph theory notions as proper colourings and independent sets. For a given $H$, $k \in V(H)$ and $G$ we consider the proportion of vertices of $G$ that get mapped to $k$ in a uniformly chosen $H$-colouring of $G$. Our main result concerns this quantity when $G$ is regular and bipartite. We find numbers $0 \leq a^-(k) \leq a^+(k) \leq 1$ with the property that for all such $G$, with h…
A proper vertex colouring of a graph $G$ is referred to as conflict-free if in the neighbourhood of every vertex some colour appears exactly once, while it is called $h$-conflict-free if there are at least $h$ such colours for each vertex of $G$. The least numbers of colours in such colourings of $G$ are denoted $χ_{\rm pcf}(G)$ and $χ_{\rm pcf}^h(G)$, respectively. It is known that $χ_{\rm pcf}^h(G)$ can be as large as $(h+1)(Δ+1)\approx Δ^2$ for graphs with maximum degree $Δ$ and $h$ very close to $Δ$. We provide several new upper bounds for these parameters for graphs with minimum degrees $…
Consider any dense r-regular quasirandom bipartite graph H with parts of size n and fix a set of r colours. Let L be a random list assignment where each colour is available for each edge of H with probability p. We show that the threshold probability for H to have a proper L-edge-colouring is p of order (log n)/n. This answers a question of Kang, Kelly, Kühn, Methuku and Osthus. We thus obtain the same threshold for Steiner Triple Systems and Latin squares; the latter answers a question of Johanssen from 2006.
One of the most famous applications of Graph Theory is in the field of Channel Assignment Problems. There are varieties of graph colouring concepts that are used for different requirements of frequency assignments in communication channels. We introduce here L(t, 1)-colouring of graphs. This has its foundation in T-colouring and L(p, q)-colouring. For a given finite set T including zero, an L(t, 1)-colouring of a graph G is an assignment of non-negative integers to the vertices of G such that the difference between the colours of adjacent vertices must not belong to the set T and the colours o…
For a positive integer k and a graph G, we consider proper vertex-colourings of G with k colours in which all k colours are actually used. We call such a colouring a strong k-colouring. The strong k-colour graph of G, S_k(G), is the graph that has all the strong k-colourings of G as its vertex set, and two colourings are adjacent in S_k(G) if they differ in colour on only one vertex of G. In this paper, we show some results related to the question : For what G and k is S_k(G) connected ?
In this paper we introduce the notion of $Σ$-colouring of a graph $G$: For given subsets $Σ(v)$ of neighbours of $v$, for every $v\in V(G)$, this is a proper colouring of the vertices of $G$ such that, in addition, vertices that appear together in some $Σ(v)$ receive different colours. This concept generalises the notion of colouring the square of graphs and of cyclic colouring of graphs embedded in a surface. We prove a general result for graphs embeddable in a fixed surface, which implies asymptotic versions of Wegner's and Borodin's Conjecture on the planar version of these two colourings. …
Recently Lau-Jeyaseeli-Shiu-Arumugam introduced the concept of the "Sudoku colourings" of graphs -- partial $χ(G)$-colourings of $G$ that have a unique extension to a proper $χ(G)$-colouring of all the vertices. They introduced the Sudoku number of a graph as the minimal number of coloured vertices in a Sudoku colouring. They conjectured that a connected graph has Sudoku number $n-1$ if, and only if, it is complete. In this note we prove that this is true.
We prove several results on approximate decompositions of edge-coloured quasirandom graphs into rainbow spanning structures. More precisely, we say that an edge-colouring of a graph is locally $\ell$-bounded if no vertex is incident to more than $\ell$ edges of any given colour, and that it is (globally) $g$-bounded if no colour appears more than $g$ times in the colouring. Note that every proper colouring of an $n$-vertex graph is locally $1$-bounded, and (globally) $n/2$-bounded. Our results imply the following: (i) The existence of approximate decompositions of edge-coloured $K_n$ into rain…
Consider a simple graph $G=(V,E)$ of maximum degree $Δ$ and its proper total colouring $c$ with the elements of the set $\{1,2,\ldots,k\}$. The colouring $c$ is said to be \emph{neighbour sum distinguishing} if for every pair of adjacent vertices $u$, $v$, we have $c(u)+\sum_{e\ni u}c(e)\neq c(v)+\sum_{e\ni v}c(e)$. The least integer $k$ for which it exists is denoted by $χ"_{\sum}(G)$, hence $χ"_{\sum}(G) \geq Δ+1$. On the other hand, it has been daringly conjectured that just one more label than presumed in the famous Total Colouring Conjecture suffices to construct such total colouring $c$,…
A \textit{restraint} $r$ on $G$ is a function which assigns each vertex $v$ of $G$ a finite set of forbidden colours $r(v)$. A proper colouring $c$ of $G$ is said to be \textit{permitted by the restraint r} if $c(v)\notin r(v)$ for every vertex $v$ of $G$. A restraint $r$ on a graph $G$ with $n$ vertices is called a \textit{$k$-restraint} if $|r(v)|=k$ and $r(v) \subseteq \{1,2,\dots ,kn\}$ for every vertex $v$ of $G$. In this article we discuss the following problem: among all $k$-restraints $r$ on $G$, which restraints permit the largest number of $x$-colourings for all large enough $x$? We …
A {\em restraint} on a (finite undirected) graph $G = (V,E)$ is a function $r$ on $V$ such that $r(v)$ is a finite subset of ${\mathbb N}$; a proper vertex colouring $c$ of $G$ is {\em permitted} by $r$ if $c(v) \not\in r(v)$ for all vertices $v$ of $G$ (we think of $r(v)$ as the set of colours {\em forbidden} at $v$). Given a large number of colors, for restraints $r$ with exactly one colour forbidden at each vertex the smallest number of colorings is permitted when $r$ is a constant function, but the problem of what restraints permit the largest number of colourings is more difficult. We det…
With any (not necessarily proper) edge $k$-colouring $γ:E(G)\longrightarrow\{1,\dots,k\}$ of a graph $G$,one can associate a vertex colouring $σ\_γ$ given by $σ\_γ(v)=\sum\_{e\ni v}γ(e)$.A neighbour-sum-distinguishing edge $k$-colouring is an edge colouring whose associated vertex colouring is proper.The neighbour-sum-distinguishing index of a graph $G$ is then the smallest $k$ for which $G$ admitsa neighbour-sum-distinguishing edge $k$-colouring.These notions naturally extends to total colourings of graphs that assign colours to both vertices and edges.We study in this paper equitable neighbo…
A strong edge-colouring of a graph is a proper edge-colouring where each colour class induces a matching. It is known that every planar graph with maximum degree $Δ$ has a strong edge-colouring with at most $4Δ+4$ colours. We show that $3Δ+1$ colours suffice if the graph has girth 6, and $4Δ$ colours suffice if $Δ\geq 7$ or the girth is at least 5. In the last part of the paper, we raise some questions related to a long-standing conjecture of Vizing on proper edge-colouring of planar graphs.
Hadwiger's Conjecture asserts that every $K_t$-minor-free graph has a proper $(t-1)$-colouring. We relax the conclusion in Hadwiger's Conjecture via improper colourings. We prove that every $K_t$-minor-free graph is $(2t-2)$-colourable with monochromatic components of order at most $\lceil{\frac12(t-2)}\rceil$. This result has no more colours and much smaller monochromatic components than all previous results in this direction. We then prove that every $K_t$-minor-free graph is $(t-1)$-colourable with monochromatic degree at most $t-2$. This is the best known degree bound for such a result. Bo…
A k-valuation is a special type of edge k-colouring of a medial graph. Various graph polynomials, such as the Tutte, Penrose, Bollobás-Riordan, and transition polynomials, admit combinatorial interpretations and evaluations as weighted counts of k-valuations. In this paper, we consider a multivariate generating function of k-valuations. We show that this is a polynomial in k and hence defines a graph polynomial. We then show that the resulting polynomial has several desirable properties, including a recursive deletion-contraction-type definition, and specialises to the graph polynomials mentio…
A well-studied concept is that of the total chromatic number. A proper total colouring of a graph is a colouring of both vertices and edges so that every pair of adjacent vertices receive different colours, every pair of adjacent edges receive different colours and every vertex and incident edge receive different colours. This paper considers a strengthening of this condition and examines the minimum number of colours required for a total colouring with the additional property that for any adjacent vertices $u$ and $v$, the sets of colours incident to $u$ is different from the set of colours i…
A proper edge $k$-colouring of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is an assignment $c:E\to \{1,2,\ldots,k\}$ of colours to the edges of the graph such that no two adjacent edges are associated with the same colour. A neighbour sum distinguishing edge $k$-colouring, or nsd $k$-colouring for short, is a proper edge $k$-colouring such that $\sum_{e\ni u}c(e)\neq \sum_{e\ni v}c(e)$ for every edge $uv$ of $G$. We denote by $χ'_{\sum}(G)$ the neighbour sum distinguishing index of $G$, which is the least integer $k$ such that an nsd $k$-colouring of $G$ exists. By definition at least maximum degree, $Δ(G)$ colours ar…
