We study Koebe orderings of planar graphs: vertex orderings obtained by modelling the graph as the intersection graph of pairwise internally-disjoint discs in the plane, and ordering the vertices by non-increasing radii of the associated discs. We prove that for every $d\in \mathbb{N}$, any such ordering has $d$-admissibility bounded by $O(d/\ln d)$ and weak $d$-coloring number bounded by $O(d^4 \ln d)$. This in particular shows that the $d$-admissibility of planar graphs is bounded by $O(d/\ln d)$, which asymptotically matches a known lower bound due to Dvořák and Siebertz.
Let G be a 4-critical graph with t triangles, embedded in a surface of genus g. Let c be the number of 4-cycles in G that do not bound a 2-cell face. We prove that the sum of lengths of (>=5)-faces of G is at most linear in g+t+c-1.
We prove that if G is a triangulation of the torus and χ(G) \neq 5, then there is a 3-coloring of the edges of G so that the edges bounding every face are assigned three different colors.
We present a randomized algorithm which takes as input an undirected graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with maximum degree $Δ$, and a number of colors $k \geq (8/3 + o_Δ(1))Δ$, and returns -- in expected time $\tilde{O}(nΔ^{2}\log{k})$ -- a proper $k$-coloring of $G$ distributed perfectly uniformly on the set of all proper $k$-colorings of $G$. Notably, our sampler breaks the barrier at $k = 3Δ$ encountered in recent work of Bhandari and Chakraborty [STOC 2020]. We also sketch how to modify our methods to relax the restriction on $k$ to $k \geq (8/3 - ε_0)Δ$ for an absolute constant $ε_0 > 0$. As in t…
Let $G(n,m)$ be the random graph on $n$ vertices with $m$ edges. Let $d=2m/n$ be its average degree. We prove that $G(n,m)$ fails to be $k$-colorable with high probability if $d>2k\ln k-\ln k-1+o_k(1)$. This matches a conjecture put forward on the basis of sophisticated but non-rigorous statistical physics ideas (Krzakala, Pagnani, Weigt 2004). The proof is based on applying the first moment method to the number of "covers", a physics-inspired concept. By comparison, a standard first moment over the number of $k$-colorings shows that $\gnm$ is not $k$-colorable with high probability if $d>2k\l…
Given two graphs $H_1$ and $H_2$, a graph $G$ is $(H_1,H_2)$-free if it contains no subgraph isomorphic to $H_1$ or $H_2$. Let $P_t$ and $C_s$ be the path on $t$ vertices and the cycle on $s$ vertices, respectively. In this paper we show that for any $(P_6,C_4)$-free graph $G$ it holds that $χ(G)\le \frac{3}{2}ω(G)$, where $χ(G)$ and $ω(G)$ are the chromatic number and clique number of $G$, respectively. %Our bound is attained by $C_5$ and the Petersen graph. Our bound is attained by several graphs, for instance, the five-cycle, the Petersen graph, the Petersen graph with an additional univers…
An edge-coloring of a graph $G$ with colors $1,\ldots,t$ is an \emph{interval $t$-coloring} if all colors are used, and the colors of edges incident to each vertex of $G$ are distinct and form an integer interval. It is well-known that there are graphs that do not have interval colorings. The \emph{deficiency} of a graph $G$, denoted by $\mathrm{def}(G)$, is the minimum number of pendant edges whose attachment to $G$ leads to a graph admitting an interval coloring. In this paper we investigate the problem of determining or bounding of the deficiency of complete multipartite graphs. In particul…
We consider vertex coloring of an acyclic digraph $\Gdag$ in such a way that two vertices which have a common ancestor in $\Gdag$ receive distinct colors. Such colorings arise in a natural way when bounding space for various genetic data for efficient analysis. We discuss the corresponding {\em down-chromatic number} and derive an upper bound as a function of $D(\Gdag)$, the maximum number of descendants of a given vertex, and the degeneracy of the corresponding hypergraph. Finally we determine an asymptotically tight upper bound of the down-chromatic number in terms of the number of vertices …
Let G be a simple connected plane graph and let C_1 and C_2 be cycles in G bounding distinct faces f_1 and f_2. For a positive integer l, let r(l) denote the number of integers n such that -l<=n<=l, n is divisible by 3, and n has the same parity as l; in particular, r(4)=1. Let r_{f_1,f_2}(G) be the product of r(|f|) over all faces f of G distinct from f_1 and f_2, and let q(G)=1+sum_{f:|f|\neq 4} |f|, where the sum is over all faces f of G. We give an algorithm with time complexity O(r_{f_1,f_2}(G)q(G)|G|) which, given a 3-coloring psi of C_1 and C_2, either finds an extension of psi to a 3-c…
In many practical applications the underlying graph must be as equitable colored as possible. A coloring is called equitable if the number of vertices colored with each color differs by at most one, and the least number of colors for which a graph has such a coloring is called its equitable chromatic number. We introduce a new integer linear programming approach for studying the equitable coloring number of a graph and show how to use it for improving lower bounds for this number. The two stage method is based on finding or upper bounding the maximum cardinality of an equitable color class in …
We study the exact square chromatic number of subcubic planar graphs. An exact square coloring of a graph G is a vertex-coloring in which any two vertices at distance exactly 2 receive distinct colors. The smallest number of colors used in such a coloring of G is its exact square chromatic number, denoted $χ^{\sharp 2}(G)$. This notion is related to other types of distance-based colorings, as well as to injective coloring. Indeed, for triangle-free graphs, exact square coloring and injective coloring coincide. We prove tight bounds on special subclasses of planar graphs: subcubic bipartite pla…
Consider a graph $G = (V, E)$ and, for each vertex $v \in V$, a subset $Σ(v)$ of neighbors of $v$. A $Σ$-coloring is a coloring of the elements of $V$ so that vertices appearing together in some $Σ(v)$ receive pairwise distinct colors. An obvious lower bound for the minimum number of colors in such a coloring is the maximum size of a set $Σ(v)$, denoted by $ρ(Σ)$. In this paper we study graph classes $F$ for which there is a function $f$, such that for any graph $G \in F$ and any $Σ$, there is a $Σ$-coloring using at most $f(ρ(Σ))$ colors. It is proved that if such a function exists for a clas…
Consider a coloring of a graph such that each vertex is assigned a fraction of each color, with the total amount of colors at each vertex summing to $1$. We define the fractional defect of a vertex $v$ to be the sum of the overlaps with each neighbor of $v$, and the fractional defect of the graph to be the maximum of the defects over all vertices. Note that this coincides with the usual definition of defect if every vertex is monochromatic. We provide results on the minimum fractional defect of $2$-colorings of some graphs.
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 $x\in R_0$, $…
Cographs are exactly the hereditarily well-colored graphs, i.e., the graphs for which a greedy vertex coloring of every induced subgraph uses only the minimally necessary number of colors $χ(G)$. We show that greedy colorings are a special case of the more general hierarchical vertex colorings, which recently were introduced in phylogenetic combinatorics. Replacing cotrees by modular decomposition trees generalizes the concept of hierarchical colorings to arbitrary graphs. We show that every graph has a modularly-minimal coloring $σ$ satisfying $|σ(M)|=χ(M)$ for every strong module $M$ of $G$.…
We study Markov chains for randomly sampling $k$-colorings of a graph with maximum degree $Δ$. Our main result is a polynomial upper bound on the mixing time of the single-site update chain known as the Glauber dynamics for planar graphs when $k=Ω(Δ/\logΔ)$. Our results can be partially extended to the more general case where the maximum eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the graph is at most $Δ^{1-\eps}$, for fixed $\eps > 0$. The main challenge when $k \le Δ+ 1$ is the possibility of "frozen" vertices, that is, vertices for which only one color is possible, conditioned on the colors of it…
A ring is a graph $R$ whose vertex set can be partitioned into $k \geq 4$ nonempty sets, $X_1, \dots, X_k$, such that for all $i \in \{1,\dots,k\}$, the set $X_i$ can be ordered as $X_i = \{u_i^1, \dots, u_i^{|X_i|}\}$ so that $X_i \subseteq N_R[u_i^{|X_i|}] \subseteq \dots \subseteq N_R[u_i^1] = X_{i-1} \cup X_i \cup X_{i+1}$. A hyperhole is a ring $R$ such that for all $i \in \{1,\dots,k\}$, $X_i$ is complete to $X_{i-1}\cup X_{i+1}$. In this paper, we prove that the chromatic number of a ring $R$ is equal to the maximum chromatic number of a hyperhole in $R$. Using this result, we give a po…
Frugal coloring in planar graphs with maximum degree 4 and 5
Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor（马里博尔大学自然科学与数学学院）；Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Mechanics, Ljubljana（卢布尔雅那数学、物理与力学研究所）；University of West Bohemia（西波希米亚大学）
The greedy coloring algorithm shows that a graph of maximum degree at most $Δ$ has chromatic number at most $Δ+ 1$, and this is tight for cliques. Much attention has been devoted to improving this "greedy bound" for graphs without large cliques. Brooks famously proved that this bound can be improved by one if $Δ\geq 3$ and the graph contains no clique of size $Δ+ 1$. Reed's Conjecture states that the "greedy bound" can be improved by $k$ if the graph contains no clique of size $Δ+ 1 - 2k$. Johansson proved that the "greedy bound" can be improved by a factor of $Ω(\ln(Δ)^{-1})$ or $Ω\left(\frac…
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…
In this paper an improved bound on the chromatic number of the Pancake graph $P_n, n\geqslant 2$, is presented. The bound is obtained using a subadditivity property of the chromatic number of the Pancake graph. We also investigate an equitable coloring of $P_n$. An equitable $(n-1)$-coloring based on efficient dominating sets is given and optimal equitable $4$-colorings are considered for small $n$. It is conjectured that the chromatic number of $P_n$ coincides with its equitable chromatic number for any $n\geqslant 2$.
A well-studied coloring problem is to assign colors to the edges of a graph $G$ so that, for every pair of vertices, all edges of at least one shortest path between them receive different colors. The minimum number of colors necessary in such a coloring is the strong rainbow connection number ($\src(G)$) of the graph. When proving upper bounds on $\src(G)$, it is natural to prove that a coloring exists where, for \emph{every} shortest path between every pair of vertices in the graph, all edges of the path receive different colors. Therefore, we introduce and formally define this more restricte…
Consider the balanced Ramsey game, in which a player has r colors and where in each step r random edges of an initially empty graph on n vertices are presented. The player has to immediately assign a different color to each edge and her goal is to avoid creating a monochromatic copy of some fixed graph F for as long as possible. The Achlioptas game is similar, but the player only loses when she creates a copy of F in one distinguished color. We show that there is an infinite family of non-forests F for which the balanced Ramsey game has a different threshold than the Achlioptas game, settling …
We establish a connection between root multiplicities for Borcherds-Kac-Moody algebras and graph coloring. We show that the generalized chromatic polynomial of the graph associated to a given Borcherds algebra can be used to give a closed formula for certain root multiplicities. Using this connection we give a second interpretation, namely that the root multiplicity of a given root coincides with the number of acyclic orientations with a unique sink of a certain graph (depending on the root). Finally, using the combinatorics of Lyndon words we construct a basis for the root spaces correspondin…
For graph classes $P_1,...,P_k$, Generalized Graph Coloring is the problem of deciding whether the vertex set of a given graph $G$ can be partitioned into subsets $V_1,...,V_k$ so that $V_j$ induces a graph in the class $P_j$ $(j=1,2,...,k)$. If $P_1 = ... = P_k$ is the class of edgeless graphs, then this problem coincides with the standard vertex $k$-{\sc colorability}, which is known to be NP-complete for any $k\ge 3$. Recently, this result has been generalized by showing that if all $P_i$'s are additive induced-hereditary, then generalized graph coloring is NP-hard, with the only exception …
We study the interactive sum choice number, a game coloring parameter introduced by Bonamy and Meeks, and obtain a recursive formula for the interactive sum choice number of forests. This formula coincides with a formula for the slow coloring cost of forests, a parameter introduced by Mahoney, Puleo, and West, and shows that these parameters are equal on forests. This answers a question of Bonamy and Meeks.
For a graph $G$ the expression $G \overset{v}{\rightarrow} (a_1, ..., a_s)$ means that for every $s$-coloring of the vertices of $G$ there exists $i \in \{1, ..., s\}$ such that there is a monochromatic $a_i$-clique of color $i$. The vertex Folkman numbers $$F_v(a_1, ..., a_s; m - 1) = \min\{\vert V(G)\vert : G \overset{v}{\rightarrow} (a_1, ..., a_s) \mbox{ and } K_{m - 1} \not\subseteq G\}.$$ are considered, where $m = \sum_{i = 1}^{s}(a_i - 1) + 1$. We know the exact values of all the numbers $F_v(a_1, ..., a_s; m - 1)$ when $\max\{a_1, ..., a_s\} \leq 6$ and also the number $F_v(2, 2, 7; 8…
A path in an edge-colored graph is rainbow if no two edges of it are colored the same, and the graph is rainbow-connected if there is a rainbow path between each pair of its vertices. The minimum number of colors needed to rainbow-connect a graph $G$ is the rainbow connection number of $G$, denoted by $\text{rc}(G)$. A simple way to rainbow-connect a graph $G$ is to color the edges of a spanning tree with distinct colors and then re-use any of these colors to color the remaining edges of $G$. This proves that $\text{rc}(G) \le |V(G)|-1$. We ask whether there is a stronger connection between tr…
Geometrization of Graphs: Towards Bounding the Chromatic Number via High-Dimensional Embedding
Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research, Peking University（北京大学北京国际数学研究中心）；CAPT, LMAM and School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University（北京大学数学科学学院）
The local chromatic number is a coloring parameter defined as the minimum number of colors that should appear in the most colorful closed neighborhood of a vertex under any proper coloring of the graph. Its directed version is the same when we consider only outneighborhoods in a directed graph. For digraphs with all arcs being present in both directions the two values are obviously equal. Here we consider oriented graphs. We show the existence of a graph where the directed local chromatic number of all oriented versions of the graph is strictly less than the local chromatic number of the under…
The chromatic number $χ(G)$ of a graph $G$, that is, the smallest number of colors required to color the vertices of $G$ so that no two adjacent vertices are assigned the same color, is a classic and extensively studied parameter. Here we consider the case where $G$ is a random block graph, also known as the stochastic block model. The vertex set is partitioned into $k\in\mathbb{N}$ parts $V_1, \dotsc, V_k$, and for each $1 \le i\le j\le k$, two vertices $u \in V_i, v\in V_j$ are connected by an edge with some probability $p_{ij} \in (0,1)$ independently. Our main result pins down the typical …
The clique number of an undirected graph $G$ is the maximum order of a complete subgraph of $G$ and is a well-known lower bound for the chromatic number of $G$. Every proper $k$-coloring of $G$ may be viewed as a homomorphism (an edge-preserving vertex mapping) of $G$ to the complete graph of order $k$. By considering homomorphisms of oriented graphs (digraphs without cycles of length at most 2), we get a natural notion of (oriented) colorings and oriented chromatic number of oriented graphs. An oriented clique is then an oriented graph whose number of vertices and oriented chromatic number co…
In this article we associate a combinatorial differential graded algebra to a cubic planar graph G. This algebra is defined combinatorially by counting binary sequences, which we introduce, and several explicit computations are provided. In addition, in the appendix by K. Sackel the F(q)-rational points of its graded augmentation variety are shown to coincide with (q+1)-colorings of the dual graph.
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 packing chromatic number $χ_ρ(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that there exists a $k$-vertex coloring of $G$ in which any two vertices receiving color $i$ are at distance at least $i+1$. In this short note we present upper and lower bound for the packing chromatic number of the lexicographic product $G\circ H$ of graphs $G$ and $H$. Both bounds coincide in many cases. In particular this happens if $|V(H)|-α(H)\geq {\rm diam}(G)-1$, where $α(G)$ denotes the independence number of $G$.
Given a labeled graph $H$ with vertex set $\{1, 2,\ldots,n\}$, the ordered Ramsey number $r_<(H)$ is the minimum $N$ such that every two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph on $\{1, 2, \ldots,N\}$ contains a copy of $H$ with vertices appearing in the same order as in $H$. The ordered Ramsey number of a labeled graph $H$ is at least the Ramsey number $r(H)$ and the two coincide for complete graphs. However, we prove that even for matchings there are labelings where the ordered Ramsey number is superpolynomial in the number of vertices. Among other results, we also prove a general upper …
In a seminal paper, Alon and Tarsi have introduced an algebraic technique for proving upper bounds on the choice number of graphs (and thus, in particular, upper bounds on their chromatic number). The upper bound on the choice number of $G$ obtained via their method, was later coined the \emph{Alon-Tarsi number of $G$} and was denoted by $AT(G)$. They have provided a combinatorial interpretation of this parameter in terms of the eulerian subdigraphs of an appropriate orientation of $G$. Their characterization can be restated as follows. Let $D$ be an orientation of $G$. Assign a weight $ω_D(H)…
