A vertex colouring of a graph is \emph{nonrepetitive on paths} if there is no path $v_1,v_2,...,v_{2t}$ such that v_i and v_{t+i} receive the same colour for all i=1,2,...,t. We determine the maximum density of a graph that admits a k-colouring that is nonrepetitive on paths. We prove that every graph has a subdivision that admits a 4-colouring that is nonrepetitive on paths. The best previous bound was 5. We also study colourings that are nonrepetitive on walks, and provide a conjecture that would imply that every graph with maximum degree $Δ$ has a $f(Δ)$-colouring that is nonrepetitive on walks. We prove that every graph with treewidth k and maximum degree $Δ$ has a $O(kΔ)$-colouring that is nonrepetitive on paths, and a $O(kΔ^3)$-colouring that is nonrepetitive on walks.
We prove that graphs excluding a fixed immersion have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number. More generally, we prove that if $H$ is a fixed planar graph that has a planar embedding with all the vertices with degree at least 4 on a single face, then graphs excluding $H$ as a topological minor have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number. This is the largest class of graphs known to have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number.
A vertex colouring of a graph $G$ is "nonrepetitive" if $G$ contains no path for which the first half of the path is assigned the same sequence of colours as the second half. Thue's famous theorem says that every path is nonrepetitively 3-colourable. This paper surveys results about nonrepetitive colourings of graphs. The goal is to give a unified and comprehensive presentation of the major results and proof methods, as well as to highlight numerous open problems.
A vertex colouring of a graph is \emph{nonrepetitive} if there is no path for which the first half of the path is assigned the same sequence of colours as the second half. The \emph{nonrepetitive chromatic number} of a graph $G$ is the minimum integer $k$ such that $G$ has a nonrepetitive $k$-colouring. Whether planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number is one of the most important open problems in the field. Despite this, the best known upper bound is $O(\sqrt{n})$ for $n$-vertex planar graphs. We prove a $O(\log n)$ upper bound.
Dujmović, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood recently in [Planar graphs have bounded queue-number, Journal of the ACM, Volume 67, Issue 4, Article No.: 22, August 2020] showed some attractive graph product structure theorems for planar graphs. By using the product structure, they proved that planar graphs have bounded queue-number $48$; in [Planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number, Advances in Combinatorics, 5, 11 pp, 2020], the authors proved that planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number $768$. In this paper, still by using some product structure theorem,…
A vertex colouring of a graph is \emph{nonrepetitive} if there is no path whose first half receives the same sequence of colours as the second half. A graph is nonrepetitively $k$-choosable if given lists of at least $k$ colours at each vertex, there is a nonrepetitive colouring such that each vertex is coloured from its own list. It is known that every graph with maximum degree $Δ$ is $cΔ^2$-choosable, for some constant $c$. We prove this result with $c=1$ (ignoring lower order terms). We then prove that every subdivision of a graph with sufficiently many division vertices per edge is nonrepe…
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 sequence is nonrepetitive if it contains no identical consecutive subsequences. An edge colouring of a path is nonrepetitive if the sequence of colours of its consecutive edges is nonrepetitive. By the celebrated construction of Thue, it is possible to generate nonrepetitive edge colourings for arbitrarily long paths using only three colours. A recent generalization of this concept implies that we may obtain such colourings even if we are forced to choose edge colours from any sequence of lists of size 4 (while sufficiency of lists of size 3 remains an open problem). As an extension of these…
A colouring of a graph is "nonrepetitive" if for every path of even order, the sequence of colours on the first half of the path is different from the sequence of colours on the second half. We show that planar graphs have nonrepetitive colourings with a bounded number of colours, thus proving a conjecture of Alon, Grytczuk, Haluszczak and Riordan (2002). We also generalise this result for graphs of bounded Euler genus, graphs excluding a fixed minor, and graphs excluding a fixed topological minor.
A total colouring of a graph is a colouring of its vertices and edges such that no two adjacent vertices or edges have the same colour and moreover, no edge coloured $c$ has its endvertex coloured $c$ too. A weak total Thue colouring of a graph $G$ is a colouring of its vertices and edges such that the colour sequence of consecutive vertices and edges of every path of $G$ is nonrepetitive. In a total Thue colouring also the induced vertex-colouring and edge-colouring of $G$ are nonrepetitive. The weak total Thue number $π_{T_w}(G)$ of a graph $G$ denotes the minimum number of colours required …
We say that a vertex colouring $φ$ of a graph $G$ is nonrepetitive if there is no positive integer $n$ and a path on $2n$ vertices $v_{1}\ldots v_{2n}$ in $G$ such that the associated sequence of colours $φ(v_{1})\ldotsφ(v_{2n})$ satisfy $φ(v_{i})=φ(v_{i+n})$ for all $i=1,2,\dots,n$. The minimum number of colours in a nonrepetitive vertex colouring of $G$ is the Thue chromatic number $π(G)$. For the case of vertex list colourings the Thue choice number $π_{l}(G)$ of $G$ denotes the smallest integer $k$ such that for every list assignment $L:V(G)\rightarrow 2^{\mathbb{N}}$ with minimum list len…
We prove that it is always possible to color online nonrepetitively any (partial) $k$-tree (that is, graphs with tree-width at most $k$) with $4^k$ colors. This implies that it is always possible to color online nonrepetitively cycles, trees and series-parallel graphs with $16$ colors. Our results generalize the respective (offline) nonrepetitive coloring results.
The planar graph product structure theorem of Dujmović, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt, and Wood [J. ACM 2020] states that every planar graph is a subgraph of the strong product of a graph with bounded treewidth and a path. This result has been the key tool to resolve important open problems regarding queue layouts, nonrepetitive colourings, centered colourings, and adjacency labelling schemes. In this paper, we extend this line of research by utilizing shallow minors to prove analogous product structure theorems for several beyond planar graph classes. The key observation that drives our work …
Alon et al. introduced the concept of non-repetitive colourings of graphs. Here we address some questions regarding non-repetitive colourings of planar graphs. Specifically, we show that the faces of any outerplanar map can be non-repetitively coloured using at most five colours. We also give some lower bounds for the number of colours required to non-repetitively colour the vertices of both outerplanar and planar graphs.
Norine's antipodal-colouring conjecture, in a form given by Feder and Subi, asserts that whenever the edges of the discrete cube are 2-coloured there must exist a path between two opposite vertices along which there is at most one colour change. The best bound to date was that there must exist such a path with at most $n/2$ colour changes. Our aim in this note is to improve this upper bound to $(\frac{3}{8}+o(1))n$.
There are two conjectures concerning planar graph colourings that are strengthenings of the four colour theorem. One concerns signed graph colouring and is proposed by Máčajová, Raspaud and Škoviera. It asserts that every signed planar graph is $4$-colourable. Another concerns list colouring and is proposed by Kündgen and Ramamurthi which asserts that if $L$ is a $2$-list assignment of a planar graph $G$, then there is an $L$-colouring of $G$ such that each colour class induces a bipartite graph. In this note we prove that the first conjecture implies the second one.
We show that there is a constant $C$ such that for every $\varepsilon>0$ any $2$-coloured $K_n$ with minimum degree at least $n/4+\varepsilon n$ in both colours contains a complete subgraph on $2t$ vertices where one colour class forms a $K_{t,t}$, provided that $n\geq \varepsilon^{-Ct}$. Also, we prove that if $K_n$ is $2$-coloured with minimum degree at least $\varepsilon n$ in both colours then it must contain one of two natural colourings of a complete graph. Both results are tight up to the value of $C$ and they answer two recent questions posed by Kamčev and Müyesser.
We study the mixed Ramsey number maxR(n,K_m,K_r), defined as the maximum number of colours in an edge-colouring of the complete graph K_n, such that K_n has no monochromatic complete subgraph on m vertices and no rainbow complete subgraph on r vertices. Improving an upper bound of Axenovich and Iverson, we show that maxR(n,K_m,K_4) <= n^{3/2}\sqrt{2m} for all m >= 3. Further, we discuss a possible way to improve their lower bound on maxR(n,K_4,K_4) based on incidence graphs of finite projective planes.
Following a given ordering of the edges of a graph $G$, the greedy edge colouring procedure assigns to each edge the smallest available colour. The minimum number of colours thus involved is the chromatic index $χ'(G)$, and the maximum is the so-called Grundy chromatic index. Here, we are interested in the restricted case where the ordering of the edges builds the graph in a connected fashion. Let $χ_c'(G)$ be the minimum number of colours involved following such an ordering. We show that it is NP-hard to determine whether $χ_c'(G)>χ'(G)$. We prove that $χ'(G)=χ_c'(G)$ if $G$ is bipartite, and…
The least $k$ admitting a proper edge colouring $c:E\to\{1,2,\ldots,k\}$ of a graph $G=(V,E)$ without isolated edges such that $\sum_{e\ni u}c(e)\neq \sum_{e\ni v}c(e)$ for every $uv\in E$ is denoted by $χ'_Σ(G)$. It has been conjectured that $χ'_Σ(G)\leq Δ+ 2$ for every connected graph of order at least three different from the cycle $C_5$, where $Δ$ is the maximum degree of $G$. It is known that $χ'_Σ(G) = Δ+ O(Δ^\frac{5}{6}\ln^\frac{1}{6}Δ)$ for a graph $G$ without isolated edges. We improve this upper bound to $χ'_Σ(G) = Δ+ O(Δ^\frac{1}{2})$ using a simpler approach involving a combinatori…
The odd colouring number is a new graph parameter introduced by Petruševski and Škrekovski. In this note, we show that graphs with so called product structure have bounded odd-colouring number. By known results on the product structure of $k$-planar graphs, this implies that $k$-planar graphs have bounded odd-colouring number, which answers a question of Cranston, Lafferty, and Song.
In this note we prove the conjecture of \cite{HaWiWi} that every bipartite multigraph with integer edge delays admits an edge colouring with $d+1$ colours in the special case where $d=3$. A connection to the Brualdi-Ryser-Stein conjecture is discussed.
The odd chromatic number and the conflict-free chromatic number are new graph parameters introduced by Petruševski and Škrekovski [2021] and Fabrici, Lužar, Rindošová and Soták [2022] respectively. In this note, we show that graphs with bounded $2$-strong colouring number have bounded odd chromatic number and bounded conflict-free chromatic number. This implies that graph classes with bounded expansion have bounded odd chromatic number and bounded conflict-free chromatic number. Moreover, it follows by known results that the odd chromatic number and the conflict-free chromatic number of $k$-pl…
In this short note we show that every connected $2$-edge coloured cubic graph admits an $10$-colouring. This lowers the best known upper bound for the chromatic number of connected $2$-edge coloured cubic graphs.
In 1971, Tomescu conjectured [Le nombre des graphes connexes $k$-chromatiques minimaux aux sommets étiquetés, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 273 (1971), 1124--1126] that every connected graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $χ(G) = k \geq 4$ has at most $k!(k-1)^{n-k}$ $k$-colourings, where equality holds if and only if the graph is formed from $K_k$ by repeatedly adding leaves. In this note we prove (a strengthening of) the conjecture of Tomescu when $k=5$.
The road colouring theorem characterizes the class of strongly connected directed graphs with constant out-degree that admit a synchronizing road colouring. The subject of this paper is a pair of related conjectures that generalize the road colouring theorem to graphs with non-constant out-degree; we give reasons to believe that both of these conjectures are true. Our main results focus on two classes of graphs, proving both conjectures for one class of graphs and one of the conjectures for an additional class of graphs. We also present computer simulations that give some empirical evidence fo…
In this note we show every orientation of a connected cubic graph admits an oriented 8-colouring. This lowers the best-known upper bound for the chromatic number of the family of orientations of connected cubic graphs. We further show that every such oriented graph admits a 2-dipath 7-colouring. These results imply that either the chromatic number for the family of oriented connected cubic graphs equals the 2-dipath chromatic number or the long-standing conjecture of Sopena [Journal of Graph Theory 25:191-205 1997] regarding the chromatic number of orientations of connected cubic graphs is fal…
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…
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.
Let the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ be coloured red or blue, and let $G$ be a graph with $|V(G)| < n$. Then ot(n,G) is defined to be the minimum integer, if it exists, such that any such colouring of $K_n$ contains a copy of $G$ with $r$ red edges and $b$ blue edges for any $r,b \geq 0$ with $r+b= e(G)$. If ot(n,G) exists for every sufficiently large $n$, we say that $G$ is \emph{omnitonal}. Omnitonal graphs were introduced by Caro, Hansberg and Montejano [arXiv:1810.12375,2019]. Now let $G_1$, $G_2$ be two copies of $G$ with their edges coloured red or blue. If there is a colour-preserv…
A fractional colouring of a graph $G$ is a function that assigns a non-negative real value to all possible colour-classes of $G$ containing any vertex of $G$, such that the sum of these values is at least one for each vertex. The fractional chromatic number is the minimum sum of the values assigned by a fractional colouring over all possible such colourings of $G$. Introduced by Bosica and Tardif, fractional covers are an extension of fractional colourings whereby the real-valued function acts on all possible subgraphs of $G$ belonging to a given class of graphs. The fractional chromatic numbe…
Gallai's colouring theorem states that if the edges of a complete graph are 3-coloured, with each colour class forming a connected (spanning) subgraph, then there is a triangle that has all 3 colours. What happens for more colours: if we $k$-colour the edges of the complete graph, with each colour class connected, how many of the $\binom{k}{3}$ triples of colours must appear as triangles? In this note we show that the `obvious' conjecture, namely that there are always at least $\binom{k-1}{2}$ triples, is not correct. We determine the minimum asymptotically. This answers a question of Johnson.…
A sequence is called non-repetitive if no of its subsequences forms a repetition (a sequence $r_1,r_2,\dots,r_{2n}$ such that $r_i=r_{n+i}$ for all $1\leq i \leq n$). Let $G$ be a graph whose vertices are coloured. A colouring $φ$ of the graph $G$ is non-repetitive if the sequence of colours on every path in $G$ is non-repetitive. The Thue chromatic number, denoted by $π(G)$, is the minimum number of colours of a non-repetitive colouring of $G$. In this short note we present a general upper bound for the Thue chromatic number for the lexicographic product $G\circ H$ of graphs $G$ and $H$ with …
In this note, we introduce and study a new version of neighbour-distinguishing arc-colourings of digraphs. An arc-colouring $γ$ of a digraph $D$ is proper if no two arcs with the same head or with the same tail are assigned the same colour. For each vertex $u$ of $D$, we denote by $S_γ^-(u)$ and $S_γ^+(u)$ the sets of colours that appear on the incoming arcs and on the outgoing arcs of $u$, respectively. An arc colouring $γ$ of $D$ is \emph{neighbour-distinguishing} if, for every two adjacent vertices $u$ and $v$ of $D$, the ordered pairs $(S_γ^-(u),S_γ^+(u))$ and $(S_γ^-(v),S_γ^+(v))$ are dis…
The grid Ramsey number $ G(r) $ is the smallest number $ n $ such that every edge-colouring of the grid graph $Γ_{n,n} := K_n \times K_n$ with $r$ colours induces a rectangle whose parallel edges receive the same colour. We show $ G(r) \leq r^{\binom{r+1}{2}} - \left( 1/4 - o(1) \right) r^{\binom{r}{2}+1} $, slightly improving the currently best known upper bound due to Gyárfás.
Balogh, Csaba, Jing and Pluhár recently determined the minimum degree threshold that ensures a $2$-coloured graph $G$ contains a Hamilton cycle of significant colour bias (i.e., a Hamilton cycle that contains significantly more than half of its edges in one colour). In this short note we extend this result, determining the corresponding threshold for $r$-colourings.
The eternal graph colouring problem, recently introduced by Klostermeyer and Mendoza, is a version of the graph colouring game, where two players take turns properly colouring a graph. In this note, we study the eternal game chromatic number of random graphs. We show that with high probability $χ_{g}^{\infty}(G_{n,p}) = (\frac{p}{2} + o(1))n$ for odd $n$, and also for even $n$ when $p=\frac{1}{k}$ for some $k \in \mathbb{N}$. The upper bound applies for even $n$ and any other value of $p$ as well, but we conjecture in this case this upper bound is not sharp. Finally, we answer a question posed…
A \emph{$k$--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 have order at most $k$. Ban and Linial conjectured that {\em every bridgeless cubic graph admits a $2$--bisection except for the Petersen graph}. In this note, we prove Ban--Linial's conjecture for claw--free cubic graphs.
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…
The reconfiguration graph for the $k$-colourings of a graph $G$, denoted $R_{k}(G)$, is the graph whose vertices are the $k$-colourings of $G$ and two colourings are joined by an edge if they differ in colour on exactly one vertex. For any $k$-colourable $P_4$-free graph $G$, Bonamy and Bousquet proved that $R_{k+1}(G)$ is connected. In this short note, we complete the classification of the connectedness of $R_{k+1}(G)$ for a $k$-colourable graph $G$ excluding a fixed path, by constructing a $7$-chromatic $2K_2$-free (and hence $P_5$-free) graph admitting a frozen $8$-colouring. This settles a…
The size-Ramsey number $\hat{R}(F,r)$ of a graph $F$ is the smallest integer $m$ such that there exists a graph $G$ on $m$ edges with the property that any colouring of the edges of $G$ with $r$ colours yields a monochromatic copy of $F$. In this short note, we give an alternative proof of the recent result of Krivelevich that $\hat{R}(P_n,r) = O((\log r)r^2 n)$. This upper bound is nearly optimal, since it is also known that $\hat{R}(P_n,r) = Ω(r^2 n)$.
An edge-coloured graph $G$ is rainbow connected if there exists a rainbow path between any two vertices. A graph $G$ is said to be $k$-rainbow connected if there exists an edge-colouring of $G$ with at most $k$ colours that is rainbow connected. For integers $n$ and $k$, let $t(n,k)$ denote the minimum number of edges in $k$-rainbow connected graphs of order $n$. In this note, we prove that $t(n,k) = \lceil k(n-2)/(k-1) \rceil$ for all $n, k \ge 3$
We say that a graph $F$ strongly arrows a pair of graphs $(G,H)$ if any 2-colouring of its edges with red and blue leads to either a red $G$ or a blue $H$ appearing as induced subgraphs of $F$. The induced Ramsey number, $IR(G,H)$ is defined as the minimum number of vertices of a graph $F$ which strongly arrows a pair $(G,H)$. We will consider two aspects of induced Ramsey numbers. Firstly there will be shown that the lower bound of the induced Ramsey number for a connected graph $G$ with independence number $α$ and a graph $H$ with clique number $ω$ roughly $\frac{ω^2α}{2}$. This bounds is sh…
Let $G$ be a graph with maximum degree $Δ$ and without isolated vertices. An edge colouring $c$ of $G$ is conflict-free if the closed neighbourhood of every edge includes a uniquely coloured element. The least number of colours admitting such $c$ is the conflict-free chromatic index of $G$, denoted by $χ'_{CF}(G)$. In "Conflict-free chromatic number versus conflict-free chromatic index" [J. Graph Theory, 2022; 99: 349--358] it was recently proved by means of the probabilistic method that $χ'_{CF}(G)\leq C_1\log_2Δ+C_2$, where $C_1>337$ and $C_2$ are constants, whereas there are families of gra…
Green and Lindqvist proved that for any 2-colouring of $\mathbb{N}$, there are in\-fi\-ni\-tely many monochromatic solutions to $x+y=z^2$. In fact, they showed the existence of a monochromatic solution in every interval $[N,cN^8]$ with large enough $N$. In this short note we give a different proof for their theorem and prove that a monochromatic solution exists in every interval $[N,10^4N^4]$ with large enough $N$. A 2-colouring of $[N,(1/27)N^4]$ avoiding monochromatic solutions to $x+y=z^2$ is also presented, which shows that in $10^4N^4$ only the constant factor can be reduced.
The size Ramsey number $\hat{r}(F)$ of a graph $F$ is the smallest integer $m$ such that there exists a graph $G$ on $m$ edges with the property that any colouring of the edges of $G$ with two colours yields a monochromatic copy of $F$. In 1983, Beck provided a beautiful argument that shows that $\hat{r}(P_n)$ is linear, solving a problem of Erdős. In this short note, we provide an alternative but elementary proof of this fact that actually gives a better bound, namely, $\hat{r}(P_n) < 137n$ for $n$ sufficiently large.
In this note we study graphs $G_r$ with the property that every colouring of $E(G_r)$ with $r+1$ colours admits a copy of some graph $H$ using at most $r$ colours. For $1\le r\le e(H)$ such graphs occur naturally at intermediate steps in the synthesis of a $2$-colour Ramsey graph $G_1\longrightarrow H$. (The corresponding notion of Ramsey-type numbers was introduced by Erdös, Hajnal and Rado in 1965 and subsequently studied by Erdös and Szemerédi in 1972). For $H=K_n$ we prove a result on building a $G_{r}$ from a $G_{r+1}$ and establish Ramsey-infiniteness. From the structural point of view, …
Dujmović et al. [\emph{J.~ACM}~'20] recently proved that every planar graph is isomorphic to a subgraph of the strong product of a bounded treewidth graph and a path. Analogous results were obtained for graphs of bounded Euler genus or apex-minor-free graphs. These tools have been used to solve longstanding problems on queue layouts, non-repetitive colouring, $p$-centered colouring, and adjacency labelling. This paper proves analogous product structure theorems for various non-minor-closed classes. One noteable example is $k$-planar graphs (those with a drawing in the plane in which each edge …
