Let $H=(V(H),E(H))$ be a graph. A $k$-coloring of $H$ is a mapping $π: V(H) \longrightarrow \{1,2,\ldots, k\}$ so that each color class induces a $K_2$-free subgraph. For a graph $G$ of order at least $2$, a $G$-free $k$-coloring of $H$ is a mapping $π: V(H) \longrightarrow \{1,2,\ldots,k\}$ so that the subgraph of $H$ induced by each color class of $π$ is $G$-free, i.e. contains no copy of $G$. The $G$-free chromatic number of $H$ is the minimum number $k$ so that there is a $G$-free $k$-coloring of $H$, denoted by $χ_G(H)$. A graph $H$ is uniquely $k$-$G$-free colouring if $χ_G(H)=k$ and every $k$-$G$-free colouring of $H$ produces the same color classes. A graph $H$ is minimal with respect to $G$-free, or $G$-free-minimal, if for every edges of $E(H)$ we have $χ_G(H\setminus\{e\})= χ_G(H)-1$. In this paper we give some bounds and attribute about uniquely $k$-$G$-free colouring and $k$-$G$-free-minimal.
An edge coloring of a graph $G$ is a Gallai coloring if it contains no rainbow triangle. We show that the number of Gallai $r$-colorings of $K_n$ is $\left(\binom{r}{2}+o(1)\right)2^{\binom{n}{2}}$. This result indicates that almost all Gallai $r$-colorings of $K_n$ use only 2 colors. We also study the extremal behavior of Gallai $r$-colorings among all $n$-vertex graphs. We prove that the complete graph $K_n$ admits the largest number of Gallai $3$-colorings among all $n$-vertex graphs when $n$ is sufficiently large, while for $r\geq 4$, it is the complete bipartite graph $K_{\lfloor n/2 \rfl…
A Gallai-coloring (Gallai-$k$-coloring) is an edge-coloring (with colors from $\{1, 2, \ldots, k\}$) of a complete graph without rainbow triangles. Given a graph $H$ and a positive integer $k$, the $k$-colored Gallai-Ramsey number $GR_k(H)$ is the minimum integer $n$ such that every Gallai-$k$-coloring of the complete graph $K_n$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. In this paper, we consider two extremal problems related to Gallai-$k$-colorings. First, we determine upper and lower bounds for the maximum number of edges that are not contained in any rainbow triangle or monochromatic triangle …
For graphs $G$ and $H$, an $H$-coloring of $G$ is an adjacency preserving map from the vertices of $G$ to the vertices of $H$. $H$-colorings generalize such notions as independent sets and proper colorings in graphs. There has been much recent research on the extremal question of finding the graph(s) among a fixed family that maximize or minimize the number of $H$-colorings. In this paper, we prove several results in this area. First, we find a class of graphs ${\mathcal H}$ with the property that for each $H \in {\mathcal H}$, the $n$-vertex tree that minimizes the number of $H$-colorings is …
An edge coloring $c$ of a graph $G$ is a royal $k$-edge coloring of $G$ if the edges of $G$ are assigned nonempty subsets of the set $\{1, 2, \ldots, k\}$ in such a way that the vertex coloring obtained by assigning the union of the colors of the incident edges of each vertex is a proper vertex coloring. If the vertex coloring is vertex-distinguishing, then $c$ is a strong royal $k$-edge coloring. The minimum positive integer $k$ for which $G$ has a strong royal $k$-edge coloring is the strong royal index of $G$. It has been conjectured that if $G$ is a connected graph of order $n\ge 4$ where …
We consider a problem proposed by Linial and Wilf to determine the structure of graphs that allows the maximum number of $q$-colorings among graphs with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges. Let $T_r(n)$ denote the Turán graph - the complete $r$-partite graph on $n$ vertices with partition sizes as equal as possible. We prove that for all odd integers $q\geq 5$ and sufficiently large $n$, the Turán graph $T_2(n)$ has at least as many $q$-colorings as any other graph $G$ with the same number of vertices and edges as $T_2(n)$, with equality holding if and only if $G=T_2(n)$. Our proof builds on methods by…
A spanning tree of an edge-colored graph is rainbow provided that each of its edges receives a distinct color. In this paper we consider the natural extremal problem of maximizing and minimizing the number of rainbow spanning trees in a graph $G$. Such a question clearly needs restrictions on the colorings to be meaningful. For edge-colorings using $n-1$ colors and without rainbow cycles, known in the literature as JL-colorings, there turns out to be a particularly nice way of counting the rainbow spanning trees and we solve this problem completely for JL-colored complete graphs $K_n$ and comp…
Given a graph $F$ and an integer $r \ge 2$, a partition $\widehat{F}$ of the edge set of $F$ into at most $r$ classes, and a graph $G$, define $c_{r, \widehat{F}}(G)$ as the number of $r$-colorings of the edges of $G$ that do not contain a copy of $F$ such that the edge partition induced by the coloring is isomorphic to the one of $F$. We think of $\widehat{F}$ as the pattern of coloring that should be avoided. The main question is, for a large enough $n$, to find the (extremal) graph $G$ on $n$ vertices which maximizes $c_{r, \widehat{F}}(G)$. This problem generalizes a question of Erd{\H o}s…
A path in a vertex-colored graph is called a \emph{vertex-monochromatic path} if its internal vertices have the same color. A vertex-coloring of a graph is a \emph{monochromatic vertex-connection coloring} (\emph{MVC-coloring} for short), if there is a vertex-monochromatic path joining any two vertices in the graph. For a connected graph $G$, the \emph{monochromatic vertex-connection number}, denoted by $mvc(G)$, is defined to be the maximum number of colors used in an \emph{MVC-coloring} of $G$. These concepts of vertex-version are natural generalizations of the colorful monochromatic connect…
An edge-coloring of a connected graph $G$ is called a {\em monochromatic connection coloring} (MC-coloring for short) if any two vertices of $G$ are connected by a monochromatic path in $G$. For a connected graph $G$, the {\em monochromatic connection number} (MC-number for short) of $G$, denoted by $mc(G)$, is the maximum number of colors that ensure $G$ has a monochromatic connection coloring by using this number of colors. This concept was introduced by Caro and Yuster in 2011. They proved that $mc(G)\leq m-n+k$ if $G$ is not a $k$-connected graph. In this paper we depict all graphs with $m…
For graphs $G$ and $H$, a homomorphism from $G$ to $H$, or $H$-coloring of $G$, is a map from the vertices of $G$ to the vertices of $H$ that preserves adjacency. When $H$ is composed of an edge with one looped endvertex, an $H$-coloring of $G$ corresponds to an independent set in $G$. Galvin showed that, for sufficiently large $n$, the complete bipartite graph $K_{δ,n-δ}$ is the $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree $δ$ that has the largest number of independent sets. In this paper, we begin the project of generalizing this result to arbitrary $H$. Writing $\hom(G,H)$ for the number of $H$-col…
We deal with an extremal problem concerning panchromatic colorings of hypergraphs. A vertex $r$-coloring of a hypergraph $H$ is \emph{panchromatic} if every edge meets every color. We prove that for every $3<r\leq\sqrt[3]{n/(100\ln n)}$, every $n$-uniform hypergraph $H$ with $|E(H)|\leq \frac{1}{20r^2}\left(\frac{n}{\ln n}\right)^{\frac {r-1}{r}}\left(\frac{r}{r-1}\right)^{n-1}$ has a panchromatic coloring with $r$ colors.
The number of proper $q$-colorings of a graph $G$, denoted by $P_G(q)$, is an important graph parameter that plays fundamental role in graph theory, computational complexity theory and other related fields. We study an old problem of Linial and Wilf to find the graphs with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges which maximize this parameter. This problem has attracted much research interest in recent years, however little is known for general $m,n,q$. Using analytic and combinatorial methods, we characterize the asymptotic structure of extremal graphs for fixed edge density and $q$. Moreover, we disprove …
For positive integers $n$ and $r$, we consider $n$-vertex graphs with the maximum number of $r$-edge-colorings with no copy of a triangle where exactly two colors appear. We prove that, if $2 \leq r \leq 26$ and $n$ is sufficiently large, the maximum is attained by the bipartite Turán graph $T_2(n)$ on $n$ vertices. This is best possible, as $T_2(n)$ is not extremal for $r \geq 27$ colors and $n \geq 3$.
The paper deals with an extremal problem concerning colorings of hypergraphs with bounded edge degrees. Consider the family of $b$-simple hypergraphs, in which any two edges do not share more than $b$ common vertices. We prove that for $n\geqslant n_0(b)$, any $n$-uniform $b$-simple hypergraph with the maximum edge degree at most $c\cdot nr^{n-b}$ is $r$-colorable, where $c>0$ is an absolute constant. We also establish some applications of the main result.
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 $r<\sqrt[5]{\ln n}$.
The book graph $B_n^{(k)}$ consists of $n$ copies of $K_{k+1}$ joined along a common $K_k$. In the prequel to this paper, we studied the diagonal Ramsey number $r(B_n^{(k)}, B_n^{(k)})$. Here we consider the natural off-diagonal variant $r(B_{cn}^{(k)}, B_n^{(k)})$ for fixed $c \in (0,1]$. In this more general setting, we show that an interesting dichotomy emerges: for very small $c$, a simple $k$-partite construction dictates the Ramsey function and all nearly-extremal colorings are close to being $k$-partite, while, for $c$ bounded away from $0$, random colorings of an appropriate density ar…
This paper proves limit theorems for the number of monochromatic edges in uniform random colorings of general random graphs. These can be seen as generalizations of the birthday problem (what is the chance that there are two friends with the same birthday?). It is shown that if the number of colors grows to infinity, the asymptotic distribution is either a Poisson mixture or a Normal depending solely on the limiting behavior of the ratio of the number of edges in the graph and the number of colors. This result holds for any graph sequence, deterministic or random. On the other hand, when the n…
Given positive integers $p$ and $q$, a $(p,q)$-coloring of the complete graph $K_n$ is an edge-coloring in which every $p$-clique receives at least $q$ colors. Erdős and Shelah posed the question of determining $f(n,p,q)$, the minimum number of colors needed for a $(p,q)$-coloring of $K_n$. In this paper, we expand on the color energy technique introduced by Pohoata and Sheffer to prove new lower bounds on this function, making explicit the connection between bounds on extremal numbers and $f(n,p,q)$. Using results on the extremal numbers of subdivided complete graphs, theta graphs, and subdiv…
For graphs $G$ and $H$, an $H$-coloring of $G$ is a map from the vertices of $G$ to the vertices of $H$ that preserves edge adjacency. We consider the following extremal enumerative question: for a given $H$, which connected $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree $δ$ maximizes the number of $H$-colorings? We show that for non-regular $H$ and sufficiently large $n$, the complete bipartite graph $K_{δ,n-δ}$ is the unique maximizer. As a corollary, for non-regular $H$ and sufficiently large $n$ the graph $K_{k,n-k}$ is the unique $k$-connected graph that maximizes the number of $H$-colorings among …
Let $\mathcal{C}_4(n)$ be the family of all connected $4$-chromatic graphs of order $n$. Given an integer $x\geq 4$, we consider the problem of finding the maximum number of $x$-colorings of a graph in $\mathcal{C}_4(n)$. It was conjectured that the maximum number of $x$-colorings is equal to $(x)_{\downarrow 4}(x-1)^{n-4}$ and the extremal graphs are those which have clique number $4$ and size $n+2$. In this article, we reduce this problem to a \textit{finite} family of graphs. We show that there exist a finite family $\mathcal{F}$ of connected $4$-chromatic graphs such that if the number of …
Alon, Balogh, Keevash and Sudakov proved that the $(k-1)$-partite Turán graph maximizes the number of distinct $r$-edge-colorings with no monochromatic $K_k$ for all fixed $k$ and $r=2,3$, among all $n$-vertex graphs. In this paper, we determine this function asymptotically for $r=2$ among $n$-vertex graphs with sub-linear independence number. Somewhat surprisingly, unlike Alon-Balogh-Keevash-Sudakov's result, the extremal construction from Ramsey-Turán theory, as a natural candidate, does not maximize the number of distinct edge-colorings with no monochromatic cliques among all graphs with su…
A matching $M$ in a graph $G$ is $r$-degenerate if the subgraph of $G$ induced by the set of vertices incident with an edge in $M$ is $r$-degenerate. Goddard, Hedetniemi, Hedetniemi, and Laskar (Generalized subgraph-restricted matchings in graphs, Discrete Mathematics 293 (2005) 129-138) introduced the notion of acyclic matchings, which coincide with $1$-degenerate matchings. Solving a problem they posed, we describe an efficient algorithm to determine the maximum size of an $r$-degenerate matching in a given chordal graph. Furthermore, we study the $r$-chromatic index of a graph defined as th…
A {\it proper conflict-free $c$-coloring} of a graph is a proper $c$-coloring such that each non-isolated vertex has a color appearing exactly once on its neighborhood. This notion was formally introduced by Fabrici et al., who proved that planar graphs have a proper conflict-free 8-coloring and constructed a planar graph with no proper conflict-free 5-coloring. Caro, Petruševski, and Škrekovski investigated this coloring concept further, and in particular studied upper bounds on the maximum average degree that guarantees a proper conflict-free $c$-coloring for $c\in\{4,5,6\}$. Along these lin…
Given a triangle-free planar graph G and a 9-cycle C in G, we characterize situations where a 3-coloring of C does not extend to a proper 3-coloring of G. This extends previous results when C is a cycle of length at most 8.
Thomassen conjectured that triangle-free planar graphs have exponentially many 3-colorings. Recently, he disproved his conjecture by providing examples of such graphs with $n$ vertices and at most $2^{15n/\log_2 n}$ 3-colorings. We improve his construction, giving examples of such graphs with at most $64^{n^{log_{9/2} 3}}<64^{n^{0.731}}$ 3-colorings. We conjecture this exponent is optimal.
On the extremal values of the number of vertices with an interval spectrum on the set of proper edge colorings of the graph of the $n$-dimensional cube
Let p be a prime number and Zp be the cyclic group of order p. A coloring of Zp is called rainbow-free with respect to a certain equation, if it contains no rainbow solution of the same, that is, a solution whose elements have pairwise distinct colors. In this paper we describe the structure of rainbow-free 3-colorings of Zp with respect to all linear equations on three variables. Consequently, we determine those linear equations on three variables for which every 3-coloring (with nonempty color classes) of Zp contains a rainbow solution of it.
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.
A total $k$-coloring of a graph $G$ is a coloring of $V(G)\cup E(G)$ using $k$ colors such that no two adjacent or incident elements receive the same color. The total chromatic number $χ"(G)$ of $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $G$ has a total $k$-coloring. In the paper, it is proved that for any $K_5$-minor-free graph $G$, $χ''(G)\leq Δ(G)+2$ if $Δ(G)\geq 7$. Moreover, $χ"(G)=Δ(G)+1$ if $Δ(G)\geq 10$.
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…
The extremal problem of hypergraph colorings related to Erdős--Hajnal property $B$-problem is considered. Let $k$ be a natural number. The problem is to find the value of $m_k(n)$ equal to the minimal number of edges in an $n$-uniform hypergraph not admitting $2$-colorings of the vertex set such that every edge of the hypergraph contains at least $k$ vertices of each color. In this paper we obtain new lower bounds for $m_k(n).$
Given a graph, the conflict-free coloring problem on open neighborhoods (CFON) asks to color the vertices of the graph so that all the vertices have a uniquely colored vertex in its open neighborhood. The smallest number of colors required for such a coloring is called the conflict-free chromatic number and denoted $χ_{ON}(G)$. In this note, we study this problem on $S_k$-free graphs where $S_k$ is a star on $k+1$ vertices. When $G$ is $S_k$-free, we show that $χ_{ON}(G) = O(k\cdot \log^{2+ε}Δ)$, for any $ε> 0$, where $Δ$ denotes the maximum degree of $G$. Further, we show existence of claw-fr…
A clique-coloring of a graph $G$ is a coloring of the vertices of $G$ so that no maximal clique of size at least two is monochromatic. The clique-hypergraph, $\mathcal{H}(G)$, of a graph $G$ has $V(G)$ as its set of vertices and the maximal cliques of $G$ as its hyperedges. A (vertex) coloring of $\mathcal{H}(G)$ is a clique-coloring of $G$. The clique-chromatic number of $G$ is the least number of colors for which $G$ admits a clique-coloring. Every planar graph has been proved to be 3-clique-colorable (Electr. J. Combin. 6 (1999), \#R26). Recently, we showed that every claw-free planar graph…
We present a polynomial-time algorithm that determines whether a graph that contains no induced path on six vertices and no bull (the graph with vertices a, b, c, d, e and edges ab, bc, cd, be, ce) is 4-colorable. We also show that for any fixed k the k-coloring problem can be solved in polynomial time in the class of ($P_6$, bull, gem)-free graphs.
In FOCS'2002, Even et al. introduced and studied the notion of conflict-free colorings of geometrically defined hypergraphs. They motivated it by frequency assignment problems in cellular networks. This notion has been extensively studied since then. A conflict-free coloring of a graph is a coloring of its vertices such that the neighborhood (pointed or closed) of each vertex contains a vertex whose color differs from the colors of all other vertices in that neighborhood. In this paper we study conflict-colorings of intersection graphs of geometric objects. We show that any intersection graph …
Let $H=(V(H),E(H))$ be a graph. A $k$-coloring of $H$ is a mapping $π: V(H) \longrightarrow \{1,2,\ldots, k\}$, if each color class induces a $K_2$-free subgraph. For a graph $G$ of order at least $2$, a $G$-free $k$-coloring of $H$, is a mapping $π: V(H) \longrightarrow \{1,2,\ldots,k\}$, so that the induced subgraph by each color class of $π$, contains no copy of $G$. The $G$-free chromatic number of $H$, is the minimum number $k$, so that it has a $G$-free $k$-coloring, and denoted by $χ_G(H)$. In this paper, we give some bounds and attributes on the $G$-free chromatic number of graphs, in …
Given an undirected graph $G = (V,E)$, a conflict-free coloring with respect to open neighborhoods (CFON coloring) is a vertex coloring such that every vertex has a uniquely colored vertex in its open neighborhood. The minimum number of colors required for such a coloring is the CFON chromatic number of $G$, denoted by $χ_{ON}(G)$. In previous work [WG 2020], we showed the upper bound $χ_{ON}(G) \leq dc(G) + 3$, where $dc(G)$ denotes the distance to cluster parameter of $G$. In this paper, we obtain the improved upper bound of $χ_{ON}(G) \leq dc(G) + 1$. We also exhibit a family of graphs for …
Even-hole-free graphs are a graph class of much interest. Foley et al. [Graphs Comb. 36(1): 125-138 (2020)] have recently studied $(4K_1, C_4, C_6)$-free graphs, which form a subclass of even-hole-free graphs. Specifically, Foley et al. have shown an algorithm for coloring these graphs via bounded clique-width if they contain a $C_7$. In this note, we give a simpler and much faster algorithm via a more restrictive graph parameter, neighborhood diversity.
For a given number of colors, $s$, the guessing number of a graph is the (base $s$) logarithm of the cardinality of the largest family of colorings of the vertex set of the graph such that the color of each vertex can be determined from the colors of the vertices in its neighborhood. This quantity is related to problems in network coding, circuit complexity and graph entropy. We study the guessing number of graphs as a graph property in the context of classic extremal questions, and its relationship to the forbidden subgraph property. We find the extremal number with respect to the property of…
The goal of this paper is to give a new, abstract approach to cover-decomposition and polychromatic colorings using hypergraphs on ordered vertex sets. We introduce an abstract version of a framework by Smorodinsky and Yuditsky, used for polychromatic coloring halfplanes, and apply it to so-called ABA-free hypergraphs, which are a generalization of interval graphs. Using our methods, we prove that (2k-1)-uniform ABA-free hypergraphs have a polychromatic k-coloring, a problem posed by the second author. We also prove the same for hypergraphs defined on a point set by pseudohalfplanes. These res…
For a graph $H$, the Turán number of $H$, denoted by ex$(n,H)$, is the maximum number of edges of an $n$-vertex $H$-free graph. Let $g(n,H)$ denote the maximum number of edges not contained in any monochromatic copy of $H$ in a $2$-edge-coloring of $K_n$. A wheel $W_m$ is a graph formed by connecting a single vertex to all vertices of a cycle of length $m-1$. The Turán number of $W_{2k}$ was determined by Simonovits in the 1960s. In this paper, we determine ex$(n,W_{2k+1})$ when $n$ is sufficiently large. We also show that, for sufficiently large $n$, $g(n,W_{2k+1})=\mbox{ex}(n,W_{2k+1})$ whic…
