71 research outputs found
Shortest Reconfiguration of Colorings Under Kempe Changes
International audienc
Kempe equivalence of -critical planar graphs
Answering a question of Mohar from 2007, we show that for every -critical
planar graph, its set of -colorings is a Kempe class.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; fixed some typo
Reconfiguration of Colorings in Triangulations of the Sphere
In 1973, Fisk proved that any 4-coloring of a 3-colorable triangulation of the 2-sphere can be obtained from any 3-coloring by a sequence of Kempe-changes. On the other hand, in the case where we are only allowed to recolor a single vertex in each step, which is a special case of a Kempe-change, there exists a 4-coloring that cannot be obtained from any 3-coloring.
In this paper, we present a linear-time checkable characterization of a 4-coloring of a 3-colorable triangulation of the 2-sphere that can be obtained from a 3-coloring by a sequence of recoloring operations at single vertices. In addition, we develop a quadratic-time algorithm to find such a recoloring sequence if it exists; our proof implies that we can always obtain a quadratic length recoloring sequence. We also present a linear-time checkable criterion for a 3-colorable triangulation of the 2-sphere that all 4-colorings can be obtained from a 3-coloring by such a sequence. Moreover, we consider a high-dimensional setting. As a natural generalization of our first result, we obtain a polynomial-time checkable characterization of a k-coloring of a (k-1)-colorable triangulation of the (k-2)-sphere that can be obtained from a (k-1)-coloring by a sequence of recoloring operations at single vertices and the corresponding algorithmic result. Furthermore, we show that the problem of deciding whether, for given two (k+1)-colorings of a (k-1)-colorable triangulation of the (k-2)-sphere, one can be obtained from the other by such a sequence is PSPACE-complete for any fixed k ? 4. Our results above can be rephrased as new results on the computational problems named k-Recoloring and Connectedness of k-Coloring Reconfiguration Graph, which are fundamental problems in the field of combinatorial reconfiguration
The square of a planar cubic graph is -colorable
We prove the conjecture made by G.Wegner in 1977 that the square of every
planar, cubic graph is -colorable. Here, cannot be replaced by
The Complexity of Change
Many combinatorial problems can be formulated as "Can I transform
configuration 1 into configuration 2, if certain transformations only are
allowed?". An example of such a question is: given two k-colourings of a graph,
can I transform the first k-colouring into the second one, by recolouring one
vertex at a time, and always maintaining a proper k-colouring? Another example
is: given two solutions of a SAT-instance, can I transform the first solution
into the second one, by changing the truth value one variable at a time, and
always maintaining a solution of the SAT-instance? Other examples can be found
in many classical puzzles, such as the 15-Puzzle and Rubik's Cube.
In this survey we shall give an overview of some older and more recent work
on this type of problem. The emphasis will be on the computational complexity
of the problems: how hard is it to decide if a certain transformation is
possible or not?Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure
Approximation schemes for randomly sampling colorings
Graph colouring is arguably one of the most important issues in Graph Theory. However, many of the questions that arise in the area such as the chromatic number problem or counting the number of proper colorings of a graph are known to be hard. This is the reason why approximation schemes are considered. In this thesis we consider the problem of approximate sampling a proper coloring at random. Among others, approximate samplers yield approximation schemes for the problem of counting the number of colourings of a graph. These samplers are based in Markov chains, and the main requirement of these chains is to mix rapidly, namely in time polynomial in the number of vertices. Two main examples are the Glauber and the flip dynamics. In the project we study under which conditions these chains mix rapidly and hence under which conditions there exist efficient samplers
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