An asymptotic bound for the strong chromatic number

The strong chromatic number $\chi_{\text{s}}(G)$ of a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices is the least number $r$ with the following property: after adding $r \lceil n/r \rceil - n$ isolated vertices to $G$ and taking the union with any collection of spanning disjoint copies of $K_r$ in the same vertex set, the resulting graph has a proper vertex-colouring with $r$ colours. We show that for every $c > 0$ and every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $\Delta(G) \ge cn$, $\chi_{\text{s}}(G) \leq (2 + o(1)) \Delta(G)$, which is asymptotically best possible.Comment: Minor correction, accepted for publication in Combin. Probab. Compu

Dependent k-Set Packing on Polynomoids

Specialized hereditary systems, e.g., matroids, are known to have many applications in algorithm design. We define a new notion called d-polynomoid as a hereditary system (E, ? ? 2^E) so that every two maximal sets in ? have less than d elements in common. We study the problem that, given a d-polynomoid (E, ?), asks if the ground set E contains ? disjoint k-subsets that are not in ?, and obtain a complexity trichotomy result for all pairs of k ? 1 and d ? 0. Our algorithmic result yields a sufficient and necessary condition that decides whether each hypergraph in some classes of r-uniform hypergraphs has a perfect matching, which has a number of algorithmic applications

Hitting all maximum cliques with a stable set using lopsided independent transversals

Rabern recently proved that any graph with omega >= (3/4)(Delta+1) contains a stable set meeting all maximum cliques. We strengthen this result, proving that such a stable set exists for any graph with omega > (2/3)(Delta+1). This is tight, i.e. the inequality in the statement must be strict. The proof relies on finding an independent transversal in a graph partitioned into vertex sets of unequal size.Comment: 7 pages. v4: Correction to statement of Lemma 8 and clarified proof