5,547 research outputs found
Distributed coloring in sparse graphs with fewer colors
This paper is concerned with efficiently coloring sparse graphs in the
distributed setting with as few colors as possible. According to the celebrated
Four Color Theorem, planar graphs can be colored with at most 4 colors, and the
proof gives a (sequential) quadratic algorithm finding such a coloring. A
natural problem is to improve this complexity in the distributed setting. Using
the fact that planar graphs contain linearly many vertices of degree at most 6,
Goldberg, Plotkin, and Shannon obtained a deterministic distributed algorithm
coloring -vertex planar graphs with 7 colors in rounds. Here, we
show how to color planar graphs with 6 colors in \mbox{polylog}(n) rounds.
Our algorithm indeed works more generally in the list-coloring setting and for
sparse graphs (for such graphs we improve by at least one the number of colors
resulting from an efficient algorithm of Barenboim and Elkin, at the expense of
a slightly worst complexity). Our bounds on the number of colors turn out to be
quite sharp in general. Among other results, we show that no distributed
algorithm can color every -vertex planar graph with 4 colors in
rounds.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures - An extended abstract of this work was presented
at PODC'18 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing
Optimality program in segment and string graphs
Planar graphs are known to allow subexponential algorithms running in time
or for most of the paradigmatic
problems, while the brute-force time is very likely to be
asymptotically best on general graphs. Intrigued by an algorithm packing curves
in by Fox and Pach [SODA'11], we investigate which
problems have subexponential algorithms on the intersection graphs of curves
(string graphs) or segments (segment intersection graphs) and which problems
have no such algorithms under the ETH (Exponential Time Hypothesis). Among our
results, we show that, quite surprisingly, 3-Coloring can also be solved in
time on string graphs while an algorithm running
in time for 4-Coloring even on axis-parallel segments (of unbounded
length) would disprove the ETH. For 4-Coloring of unit segments, we show a
weaker ETH lower bound of which exploits the celebrated
Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres theorem. The subexponential running time also carries over
to Min Feedback Vertex Set but not to Min Dominating Set and Min Independent
Dominating Set.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figure
On vertex coloring without monochromatic triangles
We study a certain relaxation of the classic vertex coloring problem, namely,
a coloring of vertices of undirected, simple graphs, such that there are no
monochromatic triangles. We give the first classification of the problem in
terms of classic and parametrized algorithms. Several computational complexity
results are also presented, which improve on the previous results found in the
literature. We propose the new structural parameter for undirected, simple
graphs -- the triangle-free chromatic number . We bound by
other known structural parameters. We also present two classes of graphs with
interesting coloring properties, that play pivotal role in proving useful
observation about our problem. We give/ask several conjectures/questions
throughout this paper to encourage new research in the area of graph coloring.Comment: Extended abstrac
Vertex-Coloring with Star-Defects
Defective coloring is a variant of traditional vertex-coloring, according to
which adjacent vertices are allowed to have the same color, as long as the
monochromatic components induced by the corresponding edges have a certain
structure. Due to its important applications, as for example in the
bipartisation of graphs, this type of coloring has been extensively studied,
mainly with respect to the size, degree, and acyclicity of the monochromatic
components.
In this paper we focus on defective colorings in which the monochromatic
components are acyclic and have small diameter, namely, they form stars. For
outerplanar graphs, we give a linear-time algorithm to decide if such a
defective coloring exists with two colors and, in the positive case, to
construct one. Also, we prove that an outerpath (i.e., an outerplanar graph
whose weak-dual is a path) always admits such a two-coloring. Finally, we
present NP-completeness results for non-planar and planar graphs of bounded
degree for the cases of two and three colors
Conflict-Free Coloring of Planar Graphs
A conflict-free k-coloring of a graph assigns one of k different colors to
some of the vertices such that, for every vertex v, there is a color that is
assigned to exactly one vertex among v and v's neighbors. Such colorings have
applications in wireless networking, robotics, and geometry, and are
well-studied in graph theory. Here we study the natural problem of the
conflict-free chromatic number chi_CF(G) (the smallest k for which
conflict-free k-colorings exist). We provide results both for closed
neighborhoods N[v], for which a vertex v is a member of its neighborhood, and
for open neighborhoods N(v), for which vertex v is not a member of its
neighborhood.
For closed neighborhoods, we prove the conflict-free variant of the famous
Hadwiger Conjecture: If an arbitrary graph G does not contain K_{k+1} as a
minor, then chi_CF(G) <= k. For planar graphs, we obtain a tight worst-case
bound: three colors are sometimes necessary and always sufficient. We also give
a complete characterization of the computational complexity of conflict-free
coloring. Deciding whether chi_CF(G)<= 1 is NP-complete for planar graphs G,
but polynomial for outerplanar graphs. Furthermore, deciding whether
chi_CF(G)<= 2 is NP-complete for planar graphs G, but always true for
outerplanar graphs. For the bicriteria problem of minimizing the number of
colored vertices subject to a given bound k on the number of colors, we give a
full algorithmic characterization in terms of complexity and approximation for
outerplanar and planar graphs.
For open neighborhoods, we show that every planar bipartite graph has a
conflict-free coloring with at most four colors; on the other hand, we prove
that for k in {1,2,3}, it is NP-complete to decide whether a planar bipartite
graph has a conflict-free k-coloring. Moreover, we establish that any general}
planar graph has a conflict-free coloring with at most eight colors.Comment: 30 pages, 17 figures; full version (to appear in SIAM Journal on
Discrete Mathematics) of extended abstract that appears in Proceeedings of
the Twenty-Eighth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA
2017), pp. 1951-196
- …