The chromatic sum of a graph is the smallest sum of colors among all proper colorings with natural numbers. The strength is the minimum number of colors needed to achieve the chromatic sum. We construct for each positive integer k a tree with strength k that has maximum degree only 2k-2. The result is best possible.
In 1980, Albertson and Berman introduced partial coloring. In 2000, Albertson, Grossman, and Haas introduced partial list coloring. Here, we initiate the study of partial coloring for an insightful generalization of list coloring introduced in 2015 by Dvořák and Postle, DP-coloring (or correspondence coloring). We consider the DP-coloring analogue of the Partial List Coloring Conjecture, which generalizes a natural bound for partial coloring. We show that while this partial DP-coloring conjecture does not hold, several results on partial list coloring can be extended to partial DP-coloring. We…
A planar graph can be embedded in a piecewise linear manifold, and the lattice on each linear piece can be colored with 3-coloring. If a planar graph can be colored with multiple 3-coloring, i.e. coloring the graph in pieces with different 3-color subsets of 4 colors, then the graph is 4-colorable. In this paper, multiple 3-coloring was introduced, and then the combination and partition of planar graphs for multiple 3-coloring was studied. The study reveals that planar graphs can generally be decomposed into independent subgraphs, and each subgraph can be triangulated into a symmetric structur…
We introduce a new variant of graph coloring called correspondence coloring which generalizes list coloring and allows for reductions previously only possible for ordinary coloring. Using this tool, we prove that excluding cycles of lengths 4 to 8 is sufficient to guarantee 3-choosability of a planar graph, thus answering a question of Borodin.
In the past various distance based colorings on planar graphs were introduced. We turn our focus to three of them, namely $2$-distance coloring, injective coloring, and exact square coloring. A $2$-distance coloring is a proper coloring of the vertices in which no two vertices at distance $2$ receive the same color, an injective coloring is a coloring of the vertices in which no two vertices with a common neighbor receive the same color, and an exact square coloring is a coloring of the vertices in which no two vertices at distance exactly $2$ receive the same color. We prove that planar graph…
DP-coloring (also known as correspondence coloring) is a generalization of list coloring introduced recently by Dvořák and Postle. Many known upper bounds for the list-chromatic number extend to the DP-chromatic number, but not all of them do. In this note we describe some unusual properties of DP-coloring that set it aside from list coloring. In particular, we give an example of a planar bipartite graph with DP-chromatic number $4$ and prove that the edge-DP-chromatic number of a $d$-regular graph with $d\geq 2$ is always at least $d+1$.
We consider the graph coloring game, a game in which two players take turns properly coloring the vertices of a graph, with one player attempting to complete a proper coloring, and the other player attempting to prevent a proper coloring. We show that if a graph $G$ has a proper coloring in which the game coloring number of each bicolored subgraph is bounded, then the game chromatic number of $G$ is bounded. As a corollary to this result, we show that for two graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$ with bounded game coloring number, the Cartesian product $G_1 \square G_2$ has bounded game chromatic number, ans…
Given a proper coloring $f$ of a graph $G$, a b-vertex in $f$ is a vertex that is adjacent to every color class but its own. It is a b-coloring if every color class contains at least one b-vertex, and it is a fall-coloring if every vertex is a b-vertex. The b-chromatic number of $G$ is the maximum integer $b(G)$ for which $G$ has a b-coloring with $b(G)$ colors, while the fall-chromatic number and the fall-acromatic number of $G$ are, respectively, the minimum and maximum integers $f_1(G),f_2(G)$ for which $G$ has a fall-coloring. In this article, we explore the concepts of b-homomorphisms and…
A fall $k$-coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper $k$-coloring of $G$ such that each vertex of $G$ sees all $k$ colors on its closed neighborhood. In this paper, we answer some questions of \cite{dun} about some relations between fall colorings and some other types of graph colorings.
In this work, we introduce DPG-coloring using the concepts of DP-coloring and variable degeneracy to modify the proofs on the following papers: (i) DP-3-coloring of planar graphs without $4$, $9$-cycles and cycles of two lengths from $\{6, 7, 8\}$ (R. Liu, S. Loeb, M. Rolek, Y. Yin, G. Yu, Graphs and Combinatorics 35(3) (2019) 695-705), (ii) Every planar graph without $i$-cycles adjacent simultaneously to $j$-cycles and $k$-cycles is DP-$4$-colorable when $\{i, j, k\}=\{3, 4, 5\}$ (P. Sittitrai, K. Nakprasit, arXiv:1801.06760(2019) preprint), (iii) Every planar graph is $5$-choosable (C. Thoma…
Given a 3-colorable graph $X$, the 3-coloring complex $B(X)$ is the graph whose vertices are all the independent sets which occur as color classes in some 3-coloring of $X$. Two color classes $C,D \in V(B(X))$ are joined by an edge if $C$ and $D$ appear together in a 3-coloring of $X$. The graph $B(X)$ is 3-colorable. Graphs for which $B(B(X))$ is isomorphic to $X$ are termed reflexive graphs. In this paper, we consider 3-edge-colorings of cubic graphs for which we allow half-edges. Then we consider the 3-coloring complexes of their line graphs. The main result of the paper is a surprising out…
A $(q,t)$\emph{-tree-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a $q$-coloring of vertices of $G$ such that the subgraph induced by each color class is a forest of maximum degree at most $t.$ A $(q,\infty)$\emph{-tree-coloring} of a graph $G$ is a $q$-coloring of vertices of $G$ such that the subgraph induced by each color class is a forest. Wu, Zhang, and Li introduced the concept of \emph{equitable $(q, t)$-tree-coloring} (respectively, \emph{equitable $(q, \infty)$-tree-coloring}) which is a $(q,t)$-tree-coloring (respectively, $(q, \infty)$-tree-coloring) such that the sizes of any two color classes diff…
A fall coloring of a graph G is a proper coloring of G with k colors such that each vertex sees all k colors on its closed neighborhood. In this short note, we characterize all fall colorings of Kneser graphs of type KG(n,2).
A generalization of list-coloring, now known as DP-coloring, was recently introduced by Dvořák and Postle. Essentially, DP-coloring assigns an arbitrary matching between lists of colors at adjacent vertices, as opposed to only matching identical colors as is done for list-coloring. Several results on list-coloring of planar graphs have since been extended to the setting of DP-coloring. We note that list-coloring results do not always extend to DP-coloring results. Our main result in this paper is to prove that every planar graph without cycles of length $\{4, a, b, 9\}$ for $a, b \in \{6, 7, 8…
Given a partial edge coloring of a complete graph $K_n$ and lists of allowed colors for the non-colored edges of $K_n$, can we extend the partial edge coloring to a proper edge coloring of $K_n$ using only colors from the lists? We prove that this question has a positive answer in the case when both the partial edge coloring and the color lists satisfy certain sparsity conditions.
An $\ell$-facial edge-coloring of a plane graph is a coloring of its edges such that any two edges at distance at most $\ell$ on a boundary walk of any face receive distinct colors. It is the edge-coloring variant of the $\ell$-facial vertex coloring, which arose as a generalization of the well-known cyclic coloring. It is conjectured that at most $3\ell + 1$ colors suffice for an $\ell$-facial edge-coloring of any plane graph. The conjecture has only been confirmed for $\ell \le 2$, and in this paper, we prove its validity for $\ell = 3$.
We show that for any fixed integer $m \geq 1$, a graph of maximum degree $Δ$ has a coloring with $O(Δ^{(m+1)/m})$ colors in which every connected bicolored subgraph contains at most $m$ edges. This result unifies previously known upper bounds on the number of colors sufficient for certain types of graph colorings, including star colorings, for which $O(Δ^{3/2})$ colors suffice, and acyclic colorings, for which $O(Δ^{4/3})$ colors suffice. Our proof uses a probabilistic method of Alon, McDiarmid, and Reed. This result also gives previously unknown upper bounds, including the fact that a graph o…
Dvořák and Postle \cite{DP} introduced a \textit{DP-coloring} of a simple graph as a generalization of a list-coloring. They proved a Brooks' type theorem for a DP-coloring, and Bernshteyn, Kostochka and Pron \cite{BKP} extended it to a DP-coloring of multigraphs. However, detailed structure when a multigraph does not admit a DP-coloring was not specified in \cite{BKP}. In this note, we make this point clear and give the complete structure. This is also motivated by the relation to signed coloring of signed graphs.
A fall $k$-coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper $k$-coloring of $G$ such that each vertex of $G$ sees all $k$ colors on its closed neighborhood. We denote ${\rm Fall}(G)$ the set of all positive integers $k$ for which $G$ has a fall $k$-coloring. In this paper, we study fall colorings of lexicographic product of graphs and categorical product of graphs and answer a question of \cite{dun} about fall colorings of categorical product of complete graphs. Then, we study fall colorings of union of graphs. Then, we prove that fall $k$-colorings of a graph can be reduced into proper $k$-colorings of gr…
We consider the following type of question: Given a partial proper $d$-edge coloring of the $d$-dimensional hypercube $Q_d$, and lists of allowed colors for the non-colored edges of $Q_d$,can we extend the partial coloring to a proper $d$-edge coloring using only colors from the lists? We prove that this question has a positive answer in the case when both the partial coloring and the color lists satisfy certain sparsity conditions.
A facial unique-maximum coloring of a plane graph is a vertex coloring where on each face $α$ the maximal color appears exactly once on the vertices of $α$. If the coloring is required to be proper, then the upper bound for the minimal number of colors required for such a coloring is set to $5$. Fabrici and Göring [Fabrici and Goring 2016] even conjectured that $4$ colors always suffice. Confirming the conjecture would hence give a considerable strengthening of the Four Color Theorem. In this paper, we prove that the conjecture holds for subcubic plane graphs, outerplane graphs and plane quadr…
Let $t\geqslant 2$ and $s\geqslant 1$ be two integers. Define a $(t,s)$-coloring of a hypergraph to be a coloring of its vertices using $t$ colors such that each color appears on each edge at least $s$ times. In this note, we provide a sufficient condition for the existence of a $(t,s)$-coloring of a hypergraph by using the symmetric lopsided version of Lovász Local Lemma. Our result generalizes several known results on hypergraph colorings.
An l-facial edge coloring of a plane graph is a coloring of the edges such that any two edges at distance at most l on a boundary walk of some face receive distinct colors. It is conjectured that 3l + 1 colors suffice for an l-facial edge coloring of any plane graph. We prove that 7 colors suffice for a 2-facial edge coloring of any plane graph and therefore confirm the conjecture for l = 2.
Let G be a simple graph. A coloring of vertices of G is called (i) a 2-proper coloring if vertices at distance 2 receive distinct colors; (ii) an injective coloring if vertices possessing a common neighbor receive distinct colors; (iii) a square coloring if vertices at distance at most 2 receive distinct colors. In this paper, we study inequalities of Nordhaus-Guddam type for the 2-proper chromatic number, the injective chromatic number, and the square chromatic number.
We generalize the notion of orthogonal latin squares to colorings of simple graphs. Two $n$-colorings of a graph are said to be \emph{orthogonal} if whenever two vertices share a color in one coloring they have distinct colors in the other coloring. We show that the usual bounds on the maximum size of a certain set of orthogonal latin structures such as latin squares, row latin squares, equi-$n$ squares, single diagonal latin squares, double diagonal latin squares, or sudoku squares are a special cases of bounds on orthogonal colorings of graphs.
We investigate the relationship between two kinds of vertex colorings of hypergraphs: unique-maximum colorings and conflict-free colorings. In a unique-maximum coloring, the colors are ordered, and in every hyperedge of the hypergraph the maximum color appears only once. In a conflict-free coloring, in every hyperedge of the hypergraph there is a color that appears only once. We define corresponding unique-maximum and conflict-free chromatic numbers and investigate their relationship in arbitrary hypergraphs. Then, we concentrate on hypergraphs that are induced by simple paths in tree graphs.
In this short paper, we introduce a new vertex coloring whose motivation comes from our series on odd edge-colorings of graphs. A proper vertex coloring $φ$ of graph $G$ is said to be odd if for each non-isolated vertex $x\in V(G)$ there exists a color $c$ such that $φ^{-1}(c)\cap N(x)$ is odd-sized. We prove that every simple planar graph admits an odd $9$-coloring, and conjecture that $5$ colors always suffice.
A \textit{locally identifying coloring} ($lid$-coloring) of a graph is a proper coloring such that the sets of colors appearing in the closed neighborhoods of any pair of adjacent vertices having distinct neighborhoods are distinct. Our goal is to study a \textit{relaxed locally identifying coloring} ($rlid$-coloring) of a graph that is similar to locally identifying coloring for which the coloring is not necessary proper.We denote by $χ_{rlid}(G)$ the minimum number of colors used in a relaxed locally identifying coloring of a graph $G$ In this paper, we prove that the problem of deciding tha…
We propose the notion of a majority $k$-edge-coloring of a graph $G$, which is an edge-coloring of $G$ with $k$ colors such that, for every vertex $u$ of $G$, at most half the edges of $G$ incident with $u$ have the same color. We show the best possible results that every graph of minimum degree at least $2$ has a majority $4$-edge-coloring, and that every graph of minimum degree at least $4$ has a majority $3$-edge-coloring. Furthermore, we discuss a natural variation of majority edge-colorings and some related open problems.
Given a perfect coloring of a graph, we prove that the $L_1$ distance between two rows of the adjacency matrix of the graph is not less than the $L_1$ distance between the corresponding rows of the parameter matrix of the coloring. With the help of an algebraic approach, we deduce corollaries of this result for perfect $2$-colorings, perfect colorings in distance-$l$ graphs and in distance-regular graphs. We also provide examples when the obtained property reject several putative parameter matrices of perfect colorings in infinite graphs.
Let $G$ be a simple graph of order $n$. A majority dominator coloring of a graph $G$ is proper coloring in which each vertex of the graph dominates at least half of one color class. The majority dominator chromatic number $χ_{md}(G)$ is the minimum number of color classes in a majority dominator coloring of $G$. In this paper we study properties of the majority dominator coloring of a graph. We obtain tight upper and lower bounds in terms of chromatic number, dominator chromatic number, maximum degree, domination and independence number. We also study majority dominator coloring number of sele…
We define a method for edge coloring signed graphs and what it means for such a coloring to be proper. Our method has many desirable properties: it specializes to the usual notion of edge coloring when the signed graph is all-negative, it has a natural definition in terms of vertex coloring of a line graph, and the minimum number of colors required for a proper coloring of a signed simple graph is bounded above by Δ + 1 in parallel with Vizing's Theorem. In fact, Vizing's Theorem is a special case of the more difficult theorem concerning signed graphs.
We consider the problem of extending and avoiding partial edge colorings of hypercubes; that is, given a partial edge coloring $φ$ of the $d$-dimensional hypercube $Q_d$, we are interested in whether there is a proper $d$-edge coloring of $Q_d$ that agrees with the coloring $φ$ on every edge that is colored under $φ$; or, similarly, if there is a proper $d$-edge coloring that disagrees with $φ$ on every edge that is colored under $φ$. In particular, we prove that for any $d\geq 1$, if $φ$ is a partial $d$-edge coloring of $Q_d$, then $φ$ is avoidable if every color appears on at most $d/8$ edg…
The applications of graph coloring are diverse and many so lots of new types of coloring are being proposed and explored. Here we define a safe k-coloring, motivated by the application of coloring to secret sharing. Secret sharing is a way of securing a secret from a number of attackers by dividing it into parts and then distributing those parts to some persons, represented here by graph vertices. Parts of the secret are represented by colors which are then assigned to the vertices under certain conditions, making a coloring safe if a predetermined number of attackers cannot read the whole sec…
In the first part, we introduce a notion a degree of edge-colorings of bicubic plane graphs and proves some local formula of the graded number of colorings. In the second part, we give a new proof of a result of Fisk saying that any two edge-3-colorings of a planar bicubic graph are Kempe equivalent. Additionaly we show that the degree of colorings behaves well with respect to Kempe equivalence.
A $k$-{\it edge-weighting} $w$ of a graph $G$ is an assignment of an integer weight, $w(e)\in \{1,\dots, k\}$, to each edge $e$. An edge weighting naturally induces a vertex coloring $c$ by defining $c(u)=\sum_{u\sim e} w(e)$ for every $u \in V(G)$. A $k$-edge-weighting of a graph $G$ is \emph{vertex-coloring} if the induced coloring $c$ is proper, i.e., $c(u) \neq c(v)$ for any edge $uv \in E(G)$. Given a graph $G$ and a vertex coloring $c_0$, does there exist an edge-weighting such that the induced vertex coloring is $c_0$? We investigate this problem by considering edge-weightings defined o…
DP-coloring is a relatively new coloring concept by Dvořák and Postle and was introduced as an extension of list-colorings of (undirected) graphs. It transforms the problem of finding a list-coloring of a given graph $G$ with a list-assignment $L$ to finding an independent transversal in an auxiliary graph with vertex set $\{(v,c) ~|~ v \in V(G), c \in L(v)\}$. In this paper, we extend the definition of DP-colorings to digraphs using the approach from Neumann-Lara where a coloring of a digraph is a coloring of the vertices such that the digraph does not contain any monochromatic directed cycle…
Thomassen conjectured that every triangle-free planar graph on n vertices has exponentially many 3-colorings, and proved that it has at least 2^[n^(1/12)/20000] distinct 3-colorings. We show that it has at least 2^sqrt(n/362) distinct 3-colorings.
A facial parity edge coloring of a 2-edge connected plane graph is an edge coloring where no two consecutive edges of a facial walk of any face receive the same color. Additionally, for every face f and every color c either no edge or an odd number of edges incident to f are colored by c. Czap, Jendrol', Kardoš and Sotak showed that every 2-edge connected plane graph admits a facial parity edge coloring with at most 20 colors. We improve this bound to 16 colors.
We show that if a coloring of the plane has the properties that any two points at distance one are colored differently and the plane is partitioned into uniformly colored triangles under certain conditions, then it requires at least seven colors. This is also true for a coloring using uniformly colored polygons if it has a point bordering at least four polygons.
For a graph $G$ of order $n$ a maximal edge coloring is a proper edge coloring with $χ'(K_n)$ colors such that adding any edge to $G$ in any color makes it improper. Meszka and Tyniec proved that for some values of the number of edges there are no graphs with a maximal edge coloring, while for some other values, they provided constructions of such graphs. However, for many values of the number of edges determining whether there exists any graph with a maximal edge coloring remained open. We give a complete solution of this problem.
A strong edge coloring of a graph is a proper edge coloring where the edges at distance at most two receive distinct colors. It is known that every planar graph with maximum degree D has a strong edge coloring with at most 4D + 4 colors. We show that 3D + 6 colors suffice if the graph has girth 6, and 3D colors suffice if the girth is at least 7. Moreover, we show that cubic planar graphs with girth at least 6 can be strongly edge colored with at most 9 colors.
Dominator coloring of a graph is a proper (vertex) coloring with the property that every vertex is either alone in its color class or adjacent to all vertices of at least one color class. A dominated coloring of a graph is a proper coloring such that every color class is dominated with at least one vertex. The dominator chromatic number of corona products and of edge corona products is determined. Sharp lower and upper bounds are given for the dominated chromatic number of edge corona products. The dominator chromatic number of hierarchical products is bounded from above and the dominated chro…
We consider the problem of existence of perfect $2$-colorings (equitable $2$-partitions) of Hamming graphs with given parameters. We start with conditions on parameters of graphs and colorings that are necessary for their existence. Next we observe known constructions of perfect colorings and propose some new ones giving new parameters. At last, we deduce which parameters of colorings are covered by these constructions and give tables of admissible parameters of $2$-colorings in Hamming graphs $H(n,q)$ for small $n$ and $q$. Using the connection with perfect colorings, we construct an orthogon…
A total dominator coloring of a graph G is a proper coloring of G in which each vertex of the graph is adjacent to every vertex of some color class. The total dominator chromatic number of a graph is the minimum number of color classes in a total dominator coloring. In this article, we study the total dominator coloring on middle graphs by giving several bounds for the case of general graphs and trees. Moreover, we calculate explicitely the total dominator chromatic number of the middle graph of several known families of graphs.