The main contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, we use a dynamic approach based on Reiter's pioneering work on Karp-Miller computation graphs to give a new and short proof of Mohar's Minty-type Theorem. Second, we bridge circular colorings and discrete event dynamic systems to show that the Barbosa and Gafni's results on circular chromatic number can be generalized to edge-weighted symmetric directed graphs. Third, we use the above-mentioned dynamic view of circular colorings to construct new improved lower bounds on the circular chromatic number of a graph. We show as an example that the circular chromatic number of the line graph of the Petersen graph can be determined very easily by using these bounds.
The paper characterizes $(2t+1)$-regular graphs with circular flow number $2 + \frac{2}{2t-1}$. For $t=1$ this is Tutte's characterization of cubic graphs with flow number 4. The class of cubic graphs is the only class of odd regular graphs where a flow number separates the class 1 graphs from the class 2 graphs. We finally state some conjectures and relate them to existing flow-conjectures.
In Raman (2007), using a column construction technique it is proved that every interval graph can be colored online with First Fit with at most $8w(G)$ colors, where $w(G)$ is the size of the maximum clique of $G$. Since the column construction can not be adapted to circular arc graphs we give a different proof to establish an upper bound of $9w(G)$ for online coloring a circular arc graph $G$ with the First Fit algorithm.
Let $k, d$ ($2d \leq k)$ be two positive integers. We generalize the well studied notions of $(k,d)$-colorings and of the circular chromatic number $χ_c$ to signed graphs. This implies a new notion of colorings of signed graphs, and the corresponding chromatic number $χ$. Some basic facts on circular colorings of signed graphs and on the circular chromatic number are proved, and differences to the results on unsigned graphs are analyzed. In particular, we show that the difference between the circular chromatic number and the chromatic number of a signed graph is at most 1. Indeed, there are si…
In this we consider weighted symmetric digraph. Our result generalizes the work of Zhu (J.Comb.Theory, Ser.B, 86 (2002) 109-113) concerning the (k,d)-coloring of a graph, and thus is also a generalization of a corresponding result of Tuza (J.Comb.Theory, Ser.B, 55 (1992) 236-243). Our result also strengthens a result of Goddyn, Tarsi and Zhang (J.Graph Theory 28 (1998) 155-161) concerning the relation between orientation and the (k,d)-coloring of a graph.
Given a graph $G$, and a spanning subgraph $H$ of $G$, a circular $q$-backbone $k$-coloring of $(G,H)$ is a proper $k$-coloring $c$ of $G$ such that $q\le \lvert c(u)-c(v)\rvert \le k-q$, for every edge $uv\in E(H)$. The circular $q$-backbone chromatic number of $(G,H)$, denoted by $CBC_q(G,H)$, is the minimum integer $k$ for which there exists a circular $q$-backbone $k$-coloring of $(G,H)$. The Four Color Theorem implies that whenever $G$ is planar, we have $CBC_2(G,H)\le 8$. It is conjectured that this upper bound can be improved to 7 when $H$ is a tree, and to 6 when $H$ is a matching. In …
We study the following Steinberg-type problem on circular coloring: for an odd integer $k\ge 3$, what is the smallest number $f(k)$ such that every planar graph of girth $k$ without cycles of length from $k+1$ to $f(k)$ admits a homomorphism to the odd cycle $C_k$ (or equivalently, is circular $(k,\frac{k-1}{2})$-colorable). Known results and counterexamples on Steinberg's Conjecture indicate that $f(3)\in\{6,7\}$. In this paper, we show that $f(k)$ exists if and only if $k$ is an odd prime. Moreover, we prove that for any prime $p\ge 5$, $$p^2-\frac{5}{2}p+\frac{3}{2}\le f(p)\le 2p^2+2p-5.$$ …
Higher-dimensional generalization of Youngs' theorem and circular colorings
College of Liberal Arts and Science, Kitasato University（北里大学文理学院）；Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science, Shinshu University（信州大学理学部数学科学系）
We consider circular version of the famous Nelson-Hadwiger problem. It is know that 4 colors are necessary and 7 colors suffice to color the euclidean plane in such a way that points at distance one get different colors. In $r$-circular coloring we assign arcs of length one of a circle with a perimeter $r$ in such a way that points at distance one get disjoint arcs. In this paper we show the existence of $r$-circular coloring for $r=4+\frac{4\sqrt{3}}{3}\approx 6.30$. It is the first result with $r$-circular coloring of the plane with $r$ smaller than 7. We also show $r$-circular coloring of t…
In this paper, we investigate circular chromatic number of Mycielski construction of graphs. It was shown in \cite{MR2279672} that $t^{\rm th}$ Mycielskian of the Kneser graph $KG(m,n)$ has the same circular chromatic number and chromatic number provided that $m+t$ is an even integer. We prove that if $m$ is large enough, then $χ(M^t(KG(m,n)))=χ_c(M^t(KG(m,n)))$ where $M^t$ is $t^{\rm th}$ Mycielskian. Also, we consider the generalized Kneser graph $KG(m,n,s)$ and show that there exists a threshold $m(n,s,t)$ such that $χ(M^t(KG(m,n,s)))=χ_c(M^t(KG(m,n,s)))$ for $m\geq m(n,s,t)$.
Let $k$ be an positive integer. For any two integers $i$ and $j$ in $\{0,1,\dots,k-1\}$, let $|i-j|_k=\min\{|i-j|,k-|i-j|\}$ be the circular distance between $i$ and $j$. Let $t$ be a nonnegative integer. Suppose $f$ is a mapping from $V(G)$ to $\{0,1,\dots,k-1\}$. If adjacent vertices receive different integers, and for each vertex $u$ of $G$, the number of neighbors $v$ of $u$ with $|f(u)-f(v)|_k=1$ is at most $t$, then $f$ is called a $t$-relaxed 2-distant circular $k$-coloring, or simply a $(\frac{k}{2},t)^*$-coloring of $G$. If $G$ has a $(\frac{k}{2},t)^*$-coloring, then $G$ is called $(…
The notion of the circular coloring of signed graphs is a recent one that simultaneously extends both notions of the circular coloring of graphs and $0$-free coloring of signed graphs. A circular $r$-coloring of a signed graph $(G, σ)$ is to assign points of a circle of circumference $r$, $r\geq 2$, to the vertices of $G$ such that vertices connected by a positive edge are at circular distance at least $1$ and vertices connected by a negative edge are at circular distance at most $\frac{r}{2}-1$. The infimum of all $r$ for which $(G, σ)$ admits a circular $r$-coloring is said to be the circula…
Cayley graphs of abelian groups, circular colorings and discrete fundamental groups
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Kitasato University（北里大学文理学院）；Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science, Shinshu University（信州大学理学部数学科学系）
A circular $r$-coloring of a signed graph $(G, σ)$ is an assignment $ϕ$ of points of a circle $C_r$ of circumference $r$ to the vertices of $(G, σ)$ such that for each positive edge $uv$ of $(G, σ)$ the distance of $ϕ(v)$ and $ϕ(v)$ is at least 1 and for each negative edge $uv$ the distance of $ϕ(u)$ from the antipodal of $ϕ(v)$ is at least 1. The circular chromatic number of $(G, σ)$, denoted $χ_c(G, σ)$, is the infimum of $r$ such that $(G, σ)$ admits a circular $r$-coloring. This notion is recently defined by Naserasr, Wang, and Zhu who, among other results, proved that for any signed $d$-d…
A signed graph is a pair $(G, σ)$, where $G$ is a graph and $σ: E(G) \to \{+, -\}$ is a signature which assigns to each edge of $G$ a sign. Various notions of coloring of signed graphs have been studied. In this paper, we extend circular coloring of graphs to signed graphs. Given a signed graph $(G, σ)$ a circular $r$-coloring of $(G, σ)$ is an assignment $ψ$ of points of a circle of circumference $r$ to the vertices of $G$ such that for every edge $e=uv$ of $G$, if $σ(e)=+$, then $ψ(u)$ and $ψ(v)$ have distance at least $1$, and if $σ(e)=-$, then $ψ(v)$ and the antipodal of $ψ(u)$ have distan…
The fractional and circular chromatic numbers are the two most studied non-integral refinements of the chromatic number of a graph. Starting from the definition of a coloring base of a graph, which originated in work related to ergodic theory, we formalize the notion of a gyrocoloring of a graph: the vertices are colored by translates of a single Borel set in the circle group, and neighbouring vertices receive disjoint translates. The corresponding gyrochromatic number of a graph always lies between the fractional chromatic number and the circular chromatic number. We investigate basic propert…
Université Paris Cité（巴黎西岱大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；IRIF（信息与随机研究所）；Zhejiang Normal University（浙江师范大学）；Hainan Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences（海南比勒费尔德应用科技大学）
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…
We introduce a new graph invariant that measures fractional covering of a graph by cuts. Besides being interesting in its own right, it is useful for study of homomorphisms and tension-continuous mappings. We study the relations with chromatic number, bipartite density, and other graph parameters. We find the value of our parameter for a family of graphs based on hypercubes. These graphs play for our parameter the role that circular cliques play for the circular chromatic number. The fact that the defined parameter attains on these graphs the `correct' value suggests that the definition is a n…
This paper studies some coloring properties of graph powers. We show that $χ_c(G^{^{\frac{2r+1}{2s+1}}})=\frac{(2s+1)χ_c(G)}{(s-r)χ_c(G)+2r+1}$ provided that $χ_c(G^{^{\frac{2r+1}{2s+1}}})< 4$. As a consequence, one can see that if ${2r+1 \over 2s+1} \leq {χ_c(G) \over 3(χ_c(G)-2)}$, then $χ_c(G^{^{\frac{2r+1}{2s+1}}})=\frac{(2s+1)χ_c(G)}{(s-r)χ_c(G)+2r+1}$. In particular, $χ_c(K_{3n+1}^{^{1\over3}})={9n+3\over 3n+2}$ and $K_{3n+1}^{^{1\over3}}$ has no subgraph with circular chromatic number equal to ${6n+1\over 2n+1}$. This provides a negative answer to a question asked in [Xuding Zhu, Circul…
In this paper we study the problem of coloring a unit interval graph which changes dynamically. In our model the unit intervals are added or removed one at the time, and have to be colored immediately, so that no two overlapping intervals share the same color. After each update only a limited number of intervals is allowed to be recolored. The limit on the number of recolorings per update is called the recourse budget. In this paper we show, that if the graph remains $k$-colorable at all times, and the updates consist of insertions only, then we can achieve the amortized recourse budget of $O(…
In a proper edge-coloring of a cubic graph an edge $uv$ is called poor or rich, if the set of colors of the edges incident to $u$ and $v$ contains exactly three or five colors, respectively. An edge-coloring of a graph is normal, if any edge of the graph is either poor or rich. In this note, we show that some snarks constructed by using a method introduced by Loupekhine admit a normal edge-coloring with five colors. The existence of a Berge-Fulkerson Covering for a part of the snarks considered in this paper was recently proved by Manuel and Shanthi (2015). Since the existence of a normal edge…
Despite the fact that some vertex coloring problems are polynomially solvable on certain graph classes, most of these problems are not "under control" from a polyhedral point of view. The equivalence between \emph{optimization} and \emph{polyhedral separation} suggests that, for these problems, there must exist formulations admitting some elegant characterization for the polytopes associated to them. Therefore, it is interesting to study known formulations for vertex coloring with the goal of finding such characterizations. In this work we study the asymmetric representatives formulation and w…
Penrose's work \cite{8} established a connection between the edge 3-colorings of cubic planar graphs and tensor algebras. We exploit this point of view in order to get algebraic representations of the category of cubic graphs with free ends.
Given an edge-colored complete graph $K_n$ on $n$ vertices, a perfect (respectively, near-perfect) matching $M$ in $K_n$ with an even (respectively, odd) number of vertices is rainbow if all edges have distinct colors. In this paper, we consider an edge coloring of $K_n$ by circular distance, and we denote the resulting complete graph by $K^{\bullet}_n$. We show that when $K^{\bullet}_n$ has an even number of vertices, it contains a rainbow perfect matching if and only if $n=8k$ or $n=8k+2$, where $k$ is a nonnegative integer. In the case of an odd number of vertices, Kirkman matching is known…
An edge-colored graph $G$ is said to be rainbow connected if between each pair of vertices there exists a path which uses each color at most once. The rainbow connection number, denoted by $rc(G)$, is the minimum number of colors needed to make $G$ rainbow connected. Along with its variants, which consider vertex colorings and/or so-called strong colorings, the rainbow connection number has been studied from both the algorithmic and graph-theoretic points of view. In this paper we present a range of new results on the computational complexity of computing the four major variants of the rainbow…
For a graph $G(V,E)$ and $l \in \mathbb{N}$, an $l$ distance coloring is a coloring $f: V \to \{1, 2, \cdots, n\}$ of $V$ such that $\forall u,\;v \in V,\; u\neq v,\; f(u)\neq f(v)$ when $d(u,v) \leq l$. Here $d(u,v)$ is the distance between $u$ and $v$ and is equal to the minimum number of edges that connect $u$ and $v$ in $G$. The span of $l$ distance coloring of $G$, $λ^{l}(G)$, is the minimum $n$ among all $l$ distance coloring of $G$. A class of channel assignment problem in cellular network can be formulated as a distance graph coloring problem in regular grid graphs. The cellular networ…
We study the conflict-free chromatic number chi_{CF} of graphs from extremal and probabilistic point of view. We resolve a question of Pach and Tardos about the maximum conflict-free chromatic number an n-vertex graph can have. Our construction is randomized. In relation to this we study the evolution of the conflict-free chromatic number of the Erdős-Rényi random graph G(n,p) and give the asymptotics for p=omega(1/n). We also show that for p \geq 1/2 the conflict-free chromatic number differs from the domination number by at most 3.
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…
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 …
We consider the problem of constructing deletion correcting codes over a binary alphabet and take a graph theoretic view. An $n$-bit $s$-deletion correcting code is an independent set in a particular graph. We propose constructing such a code by taking the union of many constant Hamming weight codes. This results in codes that have additional structure. Searching for codes in constant Hamming weight induced subgraphs is computationally easier than searching the original graph. We prove a lower bound on size of a codebook constructed this way for any number of deletions and show that it is only…
Barnette identified two interesting classes of cubic polyhedral graphs for which he conjectured the existence of a Hamiltonian cycle. Goodey proved the conjecture for the intersection of the two classes. We examine these classes from the point of view of distance-two colorings. A distance-two $r$-coloring of a graph $G$ is an assignment of $r$ colors to the vertices of $G$ so that any two vertices at distance at most two have different colors. Note that a cubic graph needs at least four colors. The distance-two four-coloring problem for cubic planar graphs is known to be NP-complete. We claim …
For integers $a\ge 2b>0$, a \emph{circular $a/b$-flow} is a flow that takes values from $\{\pm b, \pm(b+1), \dots, \pm(a-b)\}$. The Planar Circular Flow Conjecture states that every $2k$-edge-connected planar graph admits a circular $(2+\frac{2}{k})$-flow. The cases $k=1$ and $k=2$ are equivalent to the Four Color Theorem and Grötzsch's 3-Color Theorem. For $k\ge 3$, the conjecture remains open. Here we make progress when $k=4$ and $k=6$. We prove that (i) {\em every 10-edge-connected planar graph admits a circular 5/2-flow} and (ii) {\em every 16-edge-connected planar graph admits a circular …
The anti-Ramsey number $ar(G,H)$ with input graph $G$ and pattern graph $H$, is the maximum positive integer $k$ such that there exists an edge coloring of $G$ using $k$ colors, in which there are no rainbow subgraphs isomorphic to $H$ in $G$. ($H$ is rainbow if all its edges get distinct colors). The concept of anti-Ramsey number was introduced by Erdös, Simanovitz, and Sós in 1973. Thereafter several researchers investigated this concept in the combinatorial setting. Recently, Feng et al. revisited the anti-Ramsey problem for the pattern graph $K_{1,t}$ (for $t \geq 3$) purely from an algori…
The equitable coloring problem, introduced by Meyer in 1973, has received considerable attention and research. Recently, Wu et al. introduced the concept of equitable (t,k)-tree-coloring, which can be viewed as a generalization of proper equitable t-coloring. The strong equitable vertex k-arboricity of complete bipartite equipartition graphs was investigated in 2013. In this paper, we study the exact value of the strong equitable vertex 3-arboricity of complete equipartition tripartite graphs.
We study quantum analogs of graph colorings and chromatic number. Initially defined via an interactive protocol, quantum colorings can also be viewed as a natural operator relaxation of graph coloring. Since there is no known algorithm for producing nontrivial quantum colorings, the existing examples rely on ad hoc constructions. Almost all of the known constructions of quantum $d$-colorings start from $d$-dimensional orthogonal representations. We show the limitations of this method by exhibiting, for the first time, a graph with a 3-dimensional orthogonal representation which cannot be quant…
For an $r$-regular graph $G$, we define an edge-coloring $c$ with colors from $\{1,2,\cdots,$ $k\}$, in such a way that any vertex of $G$ is incident to at least one edge of each color. The multiset-color $c_m(v)$ of a vertex $v$ is defined as the ordered tuple $(a_1,a_2,\cdots ,a_k)$, where $a_i \ (1\leq i\leq k)$ denotes the number of edges with color $i$ which are incident with $v$ in $G$. Then this edge-coloring $c$ is called a {\it $k$-kaleidoscopic coloring} of $G$ if every two distinct vertices in $G$ have different multiset-colors and in this way the graph $G$ is defined as a {\it $k$-…
We give a (computer assisted) proof that the edges of every graph with maximum degree 3 and girth at least 17 may be 5-colored (possibly improperly) so that the complement of each color class is bipartite. Equivalently, every such graph admits a homomorphism to the Clebsch graph. Hopkins and Staton and Bondy and Locke proved that every (sub)cubic graph of girth at least 4 has an edge-cut containing at least 4/5 of the edges. The existence of such an edge-cut follows immediately from the existence of a 5-edge-coloring as described above, so our theorem may be viewed as a coloring extension of t…
A coloring of the vertices of a connected graph is convex if each color class induces a connected subgraph. We address the convex recoloring (CR) problem defined as follows. Given a graph $G$ and a coloring of its vertices, recolor a minimum number of vertices of $G$ so that the resulting coloring is convex. This problem, known to be NP-hard even on paths, was firstly motivated by applications on perfect phylogenies. In this work, we study CR on general graphs from a polyhedral point of view. First, we introduce a full-dimensional polytope based on the idea of connected subgraphs, and present …
In this paper the concept of circular $r$-flows in a mono-directed signed graph $(G, σ)$ is introduced. That is a pair $(D, f)$, where $D$ is an orientation on $G$ and $f: E(G)\to (-r,r)$ satisfies that $|f(e)|\in [1, r-1]$ for each positive edge $e$ and $|f(e)|\in [0, \frac{r}{2}-1]\cup [\frac{r}{2}+1, r)$ for each negative edge $e$, and the total in-flow equals the total out-flow at each vertex. The circular flow index of a signed graph $(G, σ)$ with no positive bridge, denoted $Φ_c(G,σ)$, is the minimum $r$ such that $(G, σ)$ admits a circular $r$-flow. This is the dual notion of circular c…
We prove that in sparse Erdős-Rényi graphs of average degree $d$, the vector chromatic number (the relaxation of chromatic number coming from the Lovàsz theta function) is typically $\tfrac{1}{2}\sqrt{d} + o_d(1)$. This fits with a long-standing conjecture that various refutation and hypothesis-testing problems concerning $k$-colorings of sparse Erdős-Rényi graphs become computationally intractable below the `Kesten-Stigum threshold' $d_{KS,k} = (k-1)^2$. Along the way, we use the celebrated Ihara-Bass identity and a carefully constructed non-backtracking random walk to prove two deterministic…
A graph G is 5/2-critical if G has no circular 5/2-coloring (or equivalently, homomorphism to C_5), but every proper subgraph of G has one. We prove that every 5/2-critical graph on n>=4 vertices has at least (5n-2)/4 edges, and list all 5/2-critical graphs achieving this bound. This implies that every planar or projective-planar graph of girth at least 10 is 5/2-colorable.
