1,588 research outputs found
Transitive and Gallai colorings
A Gallai coloring of the complete graph is an edge-coloring with no rainbow
triangle. This concept first appeared in the study of comparability graphs and
anti-Ramsey theory. We introduce a transitive analogue for acyclic directed
graphs, and generalize both notions to Coxeter systems, matroids and
commutative algebras.
It is shown that for any finite matroid (or oriented matroid), the maximal
number of colors is equal to the matroid rank. This generalizes a result of
Erd\H{o}s-Simonovits-S\'os for complete graphs. The number of Gallai (or
transitive) colorings of the matroid that use at most colors is a
polynomial in . Also, for any acyclic oriented matroid, represented over the
real numbers, the number of transitive colorings using at most 2 colors is
equal to the number of chambers in the dual hyperplane arrangement.
We count Gallai and transitive colorings of the root system of type A using
the maximal number of colors, and show that, when equipped with a natural
descent set map, the resulting quasisymmetric function is symmetric and
Schur-positive.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figure
On the phase transitions of graph coloring and independent sets
We study combinatorial indicators related to the characteristic phase
transitions associated with coloring a graph optimally and finding a maximum
independent set. In particular, we investigate the role of the acyclic
orientations of the graph in the hardness of finding the graph's chromatic
number and independence number. We provide empirical evidence that, along a
sequence of increasingly denser random graphs, the fraction of acyclic
orientations that are `shortest' peaks when the chromatic number increases, and
that such maxima tend to coincide with locally easiest instances of the
problem. Similar evidence is provided concerning the `widest' acyclic
orientations and the independence number
A bivariate chromatic polynomial for signed graphs
We study Dohmen--P\"onitz--Tittmann's bivariate chromatic polynomial
which counts all -colorings of a graph such
that adjacent vertices get different colors if they are . Our first
contribution is an extension of to signed graphs, for which we
obtain an inclusion--exclusion formula and several special evaluations giving
rise, e.g., to polynomials that encode balanced subgraphs. Our second goal is
to derive combinatorial reciprocity theorems for and its
signed-graph analogues, reminiscent of Stanley's reciprocity theorem linking
chromatic polynomials to acyclic orientations.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Universal targets for homomorphisms of edge-colored graphs
A -edge-colored graph is a finite, simple graph with edges labeled by
numbers . A function from the vertex set of one -edge-colored
graph to another is a homomorphism if the endpoints of any edge are mapped to
two different vertices connected by an edge of the same color. Given a class
of graphs, a -edge-colored graph (not necessarily
with the underlying graph in ) is -universal for
when any -edge-colored graph with the underlying graph in
admits a homomorphism to . We characterize graph classes that admit
-universal graphs. For such classes, we establish asymptotically almost
tight bounds on the size of the smallest universal graph.
For a nonempty graph , the density of is the maximum ratio of the
number of edges to the number of vertices ranging over all nonempty subgraphs
of . For a nonempty class of graphs, denotes
the density of , that is the supremum of densities of graphs in
.
The main results are the following. The class admits
-universal graphs for if and only if there is an absolute constant
that bounds the acyclic chromatic number of any graph in . For any
such class, there exists a constant , such that for any , the size
of the smallest -universal graph is between and
.
A connection between the acyclic coloring and the existence of universal
graphs was first observed by Alon and Marshall (Journal of Algebraic
Combinatorics, 8(1):5-13, 1998). One of their results is that for planar
graphs, the size of the smallest -universal graph is between and
. Our results yield that there exists a constant such that for all
, this size is bounded from above by
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