Vertex covers by monochromatic pieces - A survey of results and problems

This survey is devoted to problems and results concerning covering the vertices of edge colored graphs or hypergraphs with monochromatic paths, cycles and other objects. It is an expanded version of the talk with the same title at the Seventh Cracow Conference on Graph Theory, held in Rytro in September 14-19, 2014.Comment: Discrete Mathematics, 201

Local colourings and monochromatic partitions in complete bipartite graphs

We show that for any $2$-local colouring of the edges of the balanced complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$, its vertices can be covered with at most~$3$ disjoint monochromatic paths. And, we can cover almost all vertices of any complete or balanced complete bipartite $r$-locally coloured graph with $O(r^2)$ disjoint monochromatic cycles.\\ We also determine the $2$-local bipartite Ramsey number of a path almost exactly: Every $2$-local colouring of the edges of $K_{n,n}$ contains a monochromatic path on $n$ vertices.Comment: 18 page

On the tractability of some natural packing, covering and partitioning problems

In this paper we fix 7 types of undirected graphs: paths, paths with prescribed endvertices, circuits, forests, spanning trees, (not necessarily spanning) trees and cuts. Given an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ and two "object types" $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ chosen from the alternatives above, we consider the following questions. \textbf{Packing problem:} can we find an object of type $\mathrm{A}$ and one of type $\mathrm{B}$ in the edge set $E$ of $G$, so that they are edge-disjoint? \textbf{Partitioning problem:} can we partition $E$ into an object of type $\mathrm{A}$ and one of type $\mathrm{B}$? \textbf{Covering problem:} can we cover $E$ with an object of type $\mathrm{A}$, and an object of type $\mathrm{B}$? This framework includes 44 natural graph theoretic questions. Some of these problems were well-known before, for example covering the edge-set of a graph with two spanning trees, or finding an $s$-$t$ path $P$ and an $s'$-$t'$ path $P'$ that are edge-disjoint. However, many others were not, for example can we find an $s$-$t$ path $P\subseteq E$ and a spanning tree $T\subseteq E$ that are edge-disjoint? Most of these previously unknown problems turned out to be NP-complete, many of them even in planar graphs. This paper determines the status of these 44 problems. For the NP-complete problems we also investigate the planar version, for the polynomial problems we consider the matroidal generalization (wherever this makes sense)

Minimum degree conditions for monochromatic cycle partitioning

A classical result of Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'arf\'as and Pyber states that any $r$-edge-coloured complete graph has a partition into $O(r^2 \log r)$ monochromatic cycles. Here we determine the minimum degree threshold for this property. More precisely, we show that there exists a constant $c$ such that any $r$-edge-coloured graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree at least $n/2 + c \cdot r \log n$ has a partition into $O(r^2)$ monochromatic cycles. We also provide constructions showing that the minimum degree condition and the number of cycles are essentially tight.Comment: 22 pages (26 including appendix