Combining Ky Fan's theorem with ideas of Greene and Matousek we prove a generalization of Dol'nikov's theorem. Using another variant of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem due to Bacon and Tucker, we also prove the presence of all possible completely multicolored t-vertex complete bipartite graphs in t-colored t-chromatic Kneser graphs and in several of their relatives. In particular, this implies a generalization of a recent result of G. Spencer and F. E. Su.
Using a $Z_q$-generalization of a theorem of Ky Fan, we extend to Kneser hypergraphs a theorem of Simonyi and Tardos that ensures the existence of multicolored complete bipartite graphs in any proper coloring of a Kneser graph. It allows to derive a lower bound for the local chromatic number of Kneser hypergraphs (using a natural definition of what can be the local chromatic number of a hypergraph).
There are several topological results ensuring the existence of a large complete bipartite subgraph in any properly colored graph satisfying some special topological regularity conditions. In view of $\mathbb{Z}_p$-Tucker lemma, Alishahi and Hajiabolhassan [{\it On the chromatic number of general Kneser hypergraphs, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B, 2015}] introduced a lower bound for the chromatic number of Kneser hypergraphs ${\rm KG}^r({\mathcal H})$. Next, Meunier [{\it Colorful subhypergraphs in Kneser hypergraphs, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 2014}] improved their re…
In this paper, we will introduce an special kind of graph homomorphisms namely semi-locally-surjective graph homomorphisms and show some relations between semi-locally-surjective graph homomorphisms and colorful colorings of graphs and then we prove that for each natural number $k$, the Kneser graph $KG(2k+1,k)$ is $b$-continuous. Finally, we introduce some special conditions for graphs to be $b$-continuous.
In this paper, we study the maximum degree in non-empty induced subgraphs of the Kneser graph $KG(n,k)$. One of the main results asserts that, for $k>k_0$ and $n>64k^2$, whenever a non-empty subgraph has $m\ge k{n-2\choose k-2}$ vertices, its maximum degree is at least $\frac 12(1-\frac {k^2}n) m - {n-2\choose k-2}\ge 0.49 m$. This bound is essentially best possible. One of the intermediate steps is to obtain structural results on non-empty subgraphs with small maximum degree.
Investigating the equality of the chromatic number and the circular chromatic number of graphs has been an active stream of research for last decades. In this regard, Habolhassan and Zhu [Circular chromatic number of Kneser graphs, Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B, 2003] proved that if $n$ is sufficiently large with respect to $k$, then the Schrijver graph ${\rm SG}(n,k)$ has the same chromatic and circular chromatic number. Later, Meunier [A topological lower bound for the circular chromatic number of Schrijver graphs, Journal of Graph Theory, 2005] and independently, Simonyi and Tard…
A Kneser graph $KG_{n,k}$ is a graph whose vertices are in one-to-one correspondence with $k$-element subsets of $[n],$ with two vertices connected if and only if the corresponding sets do not intersect. A famous result due to Lovász states that the chromatic number of a Kneser graph $KG_{n,k}$ is equal to $n-2k+2$. In this paper we study the chromatic number of a random subgraph of a Kneser graph $KG_{n,k}$ as $n$ grows. A random subgraph $KG_{n,k}(p)$ is obtained by including each edge of $KG_{n,k}$ with probability $p$. For a wide range of parameters $k = k(n), p = p(n)$ we show that $χ(KG_…
Schrijver identified a family of vertex critical subgraphs of the Kneser graphs called the stable Kneser graphs $SG_{n,k}$. Björner and de Longueville proved that the neighborhood complex of the stable Kneser graph $SG_{n,k}$ is homotopy equivalent to a $k-$sphere. In this article, we prove that the homotopy type of the neighborhood complex of the Kneser graph $KG_{2,k}$ is a wedge of $(k+4)(k+1)+1$ spheres of dimension $k$. We construct a maximal subgraph $S_{2,k}$ of $KG_{2,k}$, whose neighborhood complex is homotopy equivalent to the neighborhood complex of $SG_{2,k}$. Further, we prove tha…
The Kneser graph ${\rm KG}_{n,k}$ is a graph whose vertex set is the family of all $k$-subsets of $[n]$ and two vertices are adjacent if their corresponding subsets are disjoint. The classical Erdős-Ko-Rado theorem determines the cardinality and structure of a maximum induced $K_2$-free subgraph in ${\rm KG}_{n,k}$. As a generalization of the Erdős-Ko-Rado theorem, Erdős proposed a conjecture about the maximum order of an induced $K_{s+1}$-free subgraph of ${\rm KG}_{n,k}$. As the best known result concerning this conjecture, Frankl [Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 2013], when $n\ge…
Given a graph G, the graph associahedron is a simple convex polytope whose face poset is based on the connected subgraphs of G. With the additional assignment of a color palette, we define the colorful graph associahedron, show it to be a collection of simple abstract polytopes, and explore its properties.
Lionel Levine's hat challenge has $t$ players, each with a (very large, or infinite) stack of hats on their head, each hat independently colored at random black or white. The players are allowed to coordinate before the random colors are chosen, but not after. Each player sees all hats except for those on her own head. They then proceed to simultaneously try and each pick a black hat from their respective stacks. They are proclaimed successful only if they are all correct. Levine's conjecture was the success probability tends to zero when the number of players grows. We prove that this success…
Let $n,k,r$ be positive integers with $n \geq rk$ and $r \geq 2$. Consider a circle $C$ with~$n$ points~$1,\ldots,n$ in clockwise order. The $r$-stable \emph{interlacing graph} $\text{IG}_{n,k}^{(r)}$ is the graph with vertices corresponding to $k$-subsets $S$ of $\{1,...,n\}$ such that any two distinct points in~$S$ have distance at least~$r$ around the circle, and edges between~$k$-subsets $P$ and $Q$ if they \emph{interlace}: after removing the points in~$P$ from $C$, the points in~$Q$ are in different connected components. In this paper we prove that the circular chromatic number of $\text…
In this article, we prove that the neighborhood complex of the Kneser graph $KG_{3,k}$ is of the same homotopy type as that of a wedge of $\frac{(k+1)(k+3)(k+4)(k+6)}{4}+1$ spheres of dimension $k$. We construct a maximal subgraph $S_{3,k}$ of $KG_{3,k}$, whose neighborhood complex deformation retracts onto the neighborhood complex of $SG_{3,k}$.
In 2002, A. Björner and M. de Longueville showed the neighborhood complex of the $2$-stable Kneser graph ${KG(n, k)}_{2-\textit{stab}}$ has the same homotopy type as the $(n-2k)$-sphere. A short time ago, an analogous result about the homotopy type of the neighborhood complex of almost $s$-stable Kneser graph has been announced by J. Osztényi. Combining this result with the famous Lovász's topological lower bound on the chromatic number of graphs has been yielded a new way for determining the chromatic number of these graphs which was determined a bit earlier by P. Chen. In this paper we prese…
The main result is a common generalization of results on lower bounds for the chromatic number of r-uniform hypergraphs and some of the major theorems in Tverberg-type theory, which is concerned with the intersection pattern of faces in a simplicial complex when continuously mapped to Euclidean space. As an application we get a simple proof of a generalization of a result of Kriz for certain parameters. This specializes to a short and simple proof of Kneser's conjecture. Moreover, combining this result with recent work of Mabillard and Wagner we show that the existence of certain equivariant m…
Schrijver graphs are vertex-color-critical subgraphs of Kneser graphs having the same chromatic number. They also share the value of their fractional chromatic number but Schrijver graphs are not critical for that. Here we present an induced subgraph of every Schrijver graph that is vertex-critical with respect to the fractional chromatic number. These subgraphs turn out to be isomorphic with certain circular complete graphs. We also characterize the critical edges within this subgraph.
A colored graph is a complete graph in which a color has been assigned to each edge, and a colorful cycle is a cycle in which each edge has a different color. We first show that a colored graph lacks colorful cycles iff it is Gallai, i.e., lacks colorful triangles. We then show that, under the operation $m\circ n\equiv m+n-2$, the omitted lengths of colorful cycles in a colored graph form a monoid isomorphic to a submonoid of the natural numbers which contains all integers past some point. We prove that several but not all such monoids are realized. We then characterize exact Gallai graphs, i.…
Recently, Kupavskii~[{\it On random subgraphs of {K}neser and {S}chrijver graphs. J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, {\rm 2016}.}] investigated the chromatic number of random Kneser graphs $\KG_{n,k}(ρ)$ and proved that, in many cases, the chromatic numbers of the random Kneser graph $\KG_{n,k}(ρ)$ and the Kneser graph $\KG_{n,k}$ are almost surely closed. He also marked the studying of the chromatic number of random Kneser hypergraphs $\KG^r_{n,k}(ρ)$ as a very interesting problem. With the help of $\Z_p$-Tucker lemma, a combinatorial generalization of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem, we generalize Kupavskii'…
An edge-coloring of the complete graph $K_n$ we call $F$-caring if it leaves no $F$-subgraph of $K_n$ monochromatic and at the same time every subset of $|V(F)|$ vertices contains in it at least one completely multicolored version of $F$. For the first two meaningful cases, when $F=K_{1,3}$ and $F=P_4$ we determine for infinitely many $n$ the minimum number of colors needed for an $F$-caring edge-coloring of $K_n$. An explicit family of $2\lceil\log_2 n\rceil$ $3$-edge-colorings of $K_n$ so that every quadruple of its vertices contains a totally multicolored $P_4$ in at least one of them is al…
In 2011, Meunier conjectured that for positive integers $n,k,r,s$ with $ k\geq 2$, $r\geq 2$, and $n\geq \max (\{r,s\})k$, the chromatic number of $s$ -stable $r$-uniform Kneser hypergraphs is equal to $\left\lceil \frac{n-\max (\{r,s\})(k-1)}{r-1}\right\rceil $. It is a strengthened version of the conjecture proposed by Ziegler (2002), and Alon, Drewnowski and Łuczak (2009). The problem about the chromatic number of almost $s$-stable $r$ -uniform Kneser hypergraphs has also been introduced by Meunier (2011). For the $r=2$ case of the Meunier conjecture, Jonsson (2012) provided a purely combin…
Every graph $G=(V,E)$ is an induced subgraph of some Kneser graph of rank $k$, i.e., there is an assignment of (distinct) $k$-sets $v \mapsto A_v$ to the vertices $v\in V$ such that $A_u$ and $A_v$ are disjoint if and only if $uv\in E$. The smallest such $k$ is called the Kneser rank of $G$ and denoted by $f_{\rm Kneser}(G)$. As an application of a result of Frieze and Reed concerning the clique cover number of random graphs we show that for constant $0< p< 1$ there exist constants $c_i=c_i(p)>0$, $i=1,2$ such that with high probability \[ c_1 n/(\log n)< f_{\rm Kneser}(G) < c_2 n/(\log n). \]…
We provide multicolored and infinite generalizations for a Ramsey-type problem raised by Bollobás, concerning colorings of $K_n$ where each color is well-represented. Let $χ$ be a coloring of the edges of a complete graph on $n$ vertices into $r$ colors. We call $χ$ $\varepsilon$-balanced if all color classes have $\varepsilon$ fraction of the edges. Fix some graph $H$, together with an $r$-coloring of its edges. Consider the smallest natural number $R_\varepsilon^r(H)$ such that for all $n\geq R_\varepsilon^r(H)$, all $\varepsilon$-balanced colorings $χ$ of $K_n$ contain a subgraph isomorphic…
For $k\geq 1$ and $n\geq 2k$, the Kneser graph $KG(n,k)$ has all $k$-element subsets of an $n$-element set as vertices; two such subsets are adjacent if they are disjoint. It was first proved by Lovász that the chromatic number of $KG(n,k)$ is $n-2k+2$. Schrijver constructed a vertex-critical subgraph $SG(n,k)$ of $KG(n,k)$ with the same chromatic number. For the stronger notion of criticality defined in terms of removing edges, however, no analogous construction is known except in trivial cases. We provide such a construction for $k=2$ and arbitrary $n\geq 4$ by means of a nice explicit combi…
The local chromatic number of a graph was introduced by Erdos et al. in 1986. It is in between the chromatic and fractional chromatic numbers. This motivates the study of the local chromatic number of graphs for which these quantities are far apart. Such graphs include Kneser graphs, their vertex color-critical subgraphs, the Schrijver (or stable Kneser) graphs; Mycielski graphs, and their generalizations; and Borsuk graphs. We give more or less tight bounds for the local chromatic number of many of these graphs. We use an old topological result of Ky Fan which generalizes the Borsuk-Ulam theo…
An orientation of a graph is semi-transitive if it is acyclic, and for any directed path $v_0\rightarrow v_1\rightarrow \cdots\rightarrow v_k$ either there is no edge between $v_0$ and $v_k$, or $v_i\rightarrow v_j$ is an edge for all $0\leq i<j\leq k$. An undirected graph is semi-transitive if it admits a semi-transitive orientation. Semi-transitive graphs include several important classes of graphs such as 3-colorable graphs, comparability graphs, and circle graphs, and they are precisely the class of word-representable graphs studied extensively in the literature. In this paper, we study se…
A Kneser representation KG(H) for a graph G is a bijective assignment of hyperedges of a hypergraph H to the vertices of G such that two vertices of G are adjacent if and only if the corresponding hyperedges are disjoint. In this paper, we introduce a colored version of the Turan number and use that to determine the chromatic number of some families of graphs in terms of the generalized Turan number of graphs. In particular, we determine the chromatic number of every Kneser multigraph KG(H), where the vertex set of H is the edge set of a multigraph G such that the multiplicity of each edge is …
A result due to Gyárfás, Hubenko, and Solymosi (answering a question of Erdös) states that if a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices does not contain $K_{2,2}$ as an induced subgraph yet has at least $c\binom{n}{2}$ edges, then $G$ has a complete subgraph on at least $\frac{c^2}{10}n$ vertices. In this paper we suggest a "higher-dimensional" analogue of the notion of an induced $K_{2,2}$ which allows us to generalize their result to $k$-uniform hypergraphs. Our result also has an interesting consequence in discrete geometry. In particular, it implies that the fractional Helly theorem can be derived as a …
Consider classical Kneser's graph $K(n,r)$: for two natural numbers $ r, n $ such that $r \le n / 2$, its vertices are all the subsets of $[n]=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ of size $r$, and two such vertices are adjacent if the corresponding subsets are disjoint. The Erdős--Ko--Rado theorem states that the size of the largest independent set in this graph is $\binom{n-1}{r-1}$. Now let us delete each edge of the graph $K(n,r)$ with some fixed probability $p$ independently of each other. Quite surprisingly, the independence number of such random subgraph $K_p(n,r)$ of the graph $ K(n,r) $ is, with high pro…
The orthogonality dimension of a graph $G=(V,E)$ over a field $\mathbb{F}$ is the smallest integer $t$ for which there exists an assignment of a vector $u_v \in \mathbb{F}^t$ with $\langle u_v,u_v \rangle \neq 0$ to every vertex $v \in V$, such that $\langle u_v, u_{v'} \rangle = 0$ whenever $v$ and $v'$ are adjacent vertices in $G$. The study of the orthogonality dimension of graphs is motivated by various applications in information theory and in theoretical computer science. The contribution of the present work is two-fold. First, we prove that there exists a constant $c$ such that for ever…
We give an elementary proof for the non-$3$-colorability of $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs thus providing such a proof also for $4$-chromatic Kneser graphs. To this end we use a complete description of the structure of $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs that was already given by Braun and even earlier in an unpublished manuscript by Li. We also address connections to surface quadrangulations. In particular, we show that a spanning subgraph of $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs quadrangulates the Klein bottle, while another spanning subgraph quadrangulates the projective plane. The latter is a special …
Numerous applications in scheduling, such as resource allocation or steel manufacturing, can be modeled using the NP-hard Independent Set problem (given an undirected graph and an integer k, find a set of at least k pairwise non-adjacent vertices). Here, one encounters special graph classes like 2-union graphs (edge-wise unions of two interval graphs) and strip graphs (edge-wise unions of an interval graph and a cluster graph), on which Independent Set remains NP-hard but admits constant-ratio approximations in polynomial time. We study the parameterized complexity of Independent Set on 2-unio…
Denote by $K_p(n,k)$ the random subgraph of the usual Kneser graph $K(n,k)$ in which edges appear independently, each with probability $p$. Answering a question of Bollobás, Narayanan, and Raigorodskii,we show that there is a fixed $p<1$ such that a.s. (i.e., with probability tending to 1 as $k \to \infty$) the maximum independent sets of $K_p(2k+1, k)$ are precisely the sets $\{A\in V(K(2k+1,k)): x\in A\}$ ($x\in [2k+1]$). We also complete the determination of the order of magnitude of the "threshold" for the above property for general $k$ and $n\geq 2k+2$. This is new for $k\sim n/2$, while …
For a fixed graph $H$, the $H$-IS-Deletion problem asks, given a graph $G$, for the minimum size of a set $S \subseteq V(G)$ such that $G\setminus S$ does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph. Motivated by previous work about hitting (topological) minors and subgraphs on bounded treewidth graphs, we are interested in determining, for a fixed graph $H$, the smallest function $f_H(t)$ such that $H$-IS-Deletion can be solved in time $f_H(t) \cdot n^{O(1)}$ assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH), where $t$ and $n$ denote the treewidth and the number of vertices of the input graph, respec…
For positive integers $n$ and $k$ with $n\geq 2k+1$, the Kneser graph $K(n,k)$ is the graph with vertex set consisting of all $k$-sets of $\{1,\dots,n\}$, where two $k$-sets are adjacent exactly when they are disjoint. The independent sets of $K(n,k)$ are $k$-uniform intersecting families, and hence the maximum size independent sets are given by the Erdős-Ko-Rado Theorem. Let $K_p(n,k)$ be a random spanning subgraph of $K(n,k)$ where each edge is included independently with probability $p$. Bollobás, Narayanan, and Raigorodskii asked for what $p$ does $K_p(n,k)$ have the same independence numb…
