50 research outputs found
Defective and Clustered Graph Colouring
Consider the following two ways to colour the vertices of a graph where the
requirement that adjacent vertices get distinct colours is relaxed. A colouring
has "defect" if each monochromatic component has maximum degree at most
. A colouring has "clustering" if each monochromatic component has at
most vertices. This paper surveys research on these types of colourings,
where the first priority is to minimise the number of colours, with small
defect or small clustering as a secondary goal. List colouring variants are
also considered. The following graph classes are studied: outerplanar graphs,
planar graphs, graphs embeddable in surfaces, graphs with given maximum degree,
graphs with given maximum average degree, graphs excluding a given subgraph,
graphs with linear crossing number, linklessly or knotlessly embeddable graphs,
graphs with given Colin de Verdi\`ere parameter, graphs with given
circumference, graphs excluding a fixed graph as an immersion, graphs with
given thickness, graphs with given stack- or queue-number, graphs excluding
as a minor, graphs excluding as a minor, and graphs excluding
an arbitrary graph as a minor. Several open problems are discussed.Comment: This is a preliminary version of a dynamic survey to be published in
the Electronic Journal of Combinatoric
Defective and Clustered Choosability of Sparse Graphs
An (improper) graph colouring has "defect" if each monochromatic subgraph
has maximum degree at most , and has "clustering" if each monochromatic
component has at most vertices. This paper studies defective and clustered
list-colourings for graphs with given maximum average degree. We prove that
every graph with maximum average degree less than is
-choosable with defect . This improves upon a similar result by Havet and
Sereni [J. Graph Theory, 2006]. For clustered choosability of graphs with
maximum average degree , no bound on the number of colours
was previously known. The above result with solves this problem. It
implies that every graph with maximum average degree is
-choosable with clustering 2. This extends a
result of Kopreski and Yu [Discrete Math., 2017] to the setting of
choosability. We then prove two results about clustered choosability that
explore the trade-off between the number of colours and the clustering. In
particular, we prove that every graph with maximum average degree is
-choosable with clustering , and is
-choosable with clustering . As an
example, the later result implies that every biplanar graph is 8-choosable with
bounded clustering. This is the best known result for the clustered version of
the earth-moon problem. The results extend to the setting where we only
consider the maximum average degree of subgraphs with at least some number of
vertices. Several applications are presented
Clustered Colouring in Minor-Closed Classes
The "clustered chromatic number" of a class of graphs is the minimum integer
such that for some integer every graph in the class is -colourable
with monochromatic components of size at most . We prove that for every
graph , the clustered chromatic number of the class of -minor-free graphs
is tied to the tree-depth of . In particular, if is connected with
tree-depth then every -minor-free graph is -colourable with
monochromatic components of size at most . This provides the first
evidence for a conjecture of Ossona de Mendez, Oum and Wood (2016) about
defective colouring of -minor-free graphs. If then we prove that 4
colours suffice, which is best possible. We also determine those minor-closed
graph classes with clustered chromatic number 2. Finally, we develop a
conjecture for the clustered chromatic number of an arbitrary minor-closed
class
Improper colourings inspired by Hadwiger’s conjecture
Hadwiger’s Conjecture asserts that every Kt-minor-free graph has a proper (t − 1)-colouring. We relax the conclusion in Hadwiger’s Conjecture via improper colourings. We prove that every Kt-minor-free graph is (2t − 2)-colourable with monochromatic components of order at most 1/2 (t − 2). This result has no more colours and much smaller monochromatic components than all previous results in this direction. We then prove that every Kt-minor-free graph is (t − 1)-colourable with monochromatic degree at most t − 2. This is the best known degree bound for such a result. Both these theorems are based on a decomposition method of independent interest. We give analogous results for Ks,t-minorfree graphs, which lead to improved bounds on generalised colouring numbers for these classes. Finally, we prove that graphs containing no Kt-immersion are 2-colourable with bounded monochromatic degree
Clustered 3-Colouring Graphs of Bounded Degree
A (not necessarily proper) vertex colouring of a graph has "clustering"
if every monochromatic component has at most vertices. We prove that planar
graphs with maximum degree are 3-colourable with clustering
. The previous best bound was . This result for
planar graphs generalises to graphs that can be drawn on a surface of bounded
Euler genus with a bounded number of crossings per edge. We then prove that
graphs with maximum degree that exclude a fixed minor are 3-colourable
with clustering . The best previous bound for this result was
exponential in .Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1904.0479
Product structure of graph classes with bounded treewidth
We show that many graphs with bounded treewidth can be described as subgraphs
of the strong product of a graph with smaller treewidth and a bounded-size
complete graph. To this end, define the "underlying treewidth" of a graph class
to be the minimum non-negative integer such that, for some
function , for every graph there is a graph with
such that is isomorphic to a subgraph of . We introduce disjointed coverings of graphs
and show they determine the underlying treewidth of any graph class. Using this
result, we prove that the class of planar graphs has underlying treewidth 3;
the class of -minor-free graphs has underlying treewidth (for ); and the class of -minor-free graphs has underlying
treewidth . In general, we prove that a monotone class has bounded
underlying treewidth if and only if it excludes some fixed topological minor.
We also study the underlying treewidth of graph classes defined by an excluded
subgraph or excluded induced subgraph. We show that the class of graphs with no
subgraph has bounded underlying treewidth if and only if every component of
is a subdivided star, and that the class of graphs with no induced
subgraph has bounded underlying treewidth if and only if every component of
is a star
The grid-minor theorem revisited
We prove that for every planar graph of treedepth , there exists a
positive integer such that for every -minor-free graph , there exists
a graph of treewidth at most such that is isomorphic to a
subgraph of . This is a qualitative strengthening of the
Grid-Minor Theorem of Robertson and Seymour (JCTB 1986), and treedepth is the
optimal parameter in such a result. As an example application, we use this
result to improve the upper bound for weak coloring numbers of graphs excluding
a fixed graph as a minor
Defective coloring is perfect for minors
The defective chromatic number of a graph class is the infimum such that
there exists an integer such that every graph in this class can be
partitioned into at most induced subgraphs with maximum degree at most .
Finding the defective chromatic number is a fundamental graph partitioning
problem and received attention recently partially due to Hadwiger's conjecture
about coloring minor-closed families. In this paper, we prove that the
defective chromatic number of any minor-closed family equals the simple lower
bound obtained by the standard construction, confirming a conjecture of Ossona
de Mendez, Oum, and Wood. This result provides the optimal list of unavoidable
finite minors for infinite graphs that cannot be partitioned into a fixed
finite number of induced subgraphs with uniformly bounded maximum degree. As
corollaries about clustered coloring, we obtain a linear relation between the
clustered chromatic number of any minor-closed family and the tree-depth of its
forbidden minors, improving an earlier exponential bound proved by Norin,
Scott, Seymour, and Wood and confirming the planar case of their conjecture
Product structure of graph classes with strongly sublinear separators
We investigate the product structure of hereditary graph classes admitting
strongly sublinear separators. We characterise such classes as subgraphs of the
strong product of a star and a complete graph of strongly sublinear size. In a
more precise result, we show that if any hereditary graph class
admits separators, then for any fixed
every -vertex graph in is a subgraph
of the strong product of a graph with bounded tree-depth and a complete
graph of size . This result holds with if
we allow to have tree-depth . Moreover, using extensions of
classical isoperimetric inequalties for grids graphs, we show the dependence on
in our results and the above bound are
both best possible. We prove that -vertex graphs of bounded treewidth are
subgraphs of the product of a graph with tree-depth and a complete graph of
size , which is best possible. Finally, we investigate the
conjecture that for any hereditary graph class that admits
separators, every -vertex graph in is a
subgraph of the strong product of a graph with bounded tree-width and a
complete graph of size . We prove this for various classes
of interest.Comment: v2: added bad news subsection; v3: removed section "Polynomial
Expansion Classes" which had an error, added section "Lower Bounds", and
added a new author; v4: minor revisions and corrections