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Complexity of Coloring Graphs without Paths and Cycles
Let and denote a path on vertices and a cycle on
vertices, respectively. In this paper we study the -coloring problem for
-free graphs. Maffray and Morel, and Bruce, Hoang and Sawada,
have proved that 3-colorability of -free graphs has a finite forbidden
induced subgraphs characterization, while Hoang, Moore, Recoskie, Sawada, and
Vatshelle have shown that -colorability of -free graphs for
does not. These authors have also shown, aided by a computer search, that
4-colorability of -free graphs does have a finite forbidden induced
subgraph characterization. We prove that for any , the -colorability of
-free graphs has a finite forbidden induced subgraph
characterization. We provide the full lists of forbidden induced subgraphs for
and . As an application, we obtain certifying polynomial time
algorithms for 3-coloring and 4-coloring -free graphs. (Polynomial
time algorithms have been previously obtained by Golovach, Paulusma, and Song,
but those algorithms are not certifying); To complement these results we show
that in most other cases the -coloring problem for -free
graphs is NP-complete. Specifically, for we show that -coloring is
NP-complete for -free graphs when and ; for we show that -coloring is NP-complete for -free graphs
when , ; and additionally, for , we show that
-coloring is also NP-complete for -free graphs if and
. This is the first systematic study of the complexity of the
-coloring problem for -free graphs. We almost completely
classify the complexity for the cases when , and
identify the last three open cases
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