47 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
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Aspects of graph colouring
The four-colour conjecture of 1852, and the total colouring conjecture of 1965, have sparked off many new concepts and conjectures. In this thesis we investigate many of the outstanding conjectures, establishing various related results, and present many conjectures of our own. We give a brief historical introduction (Chapter 1) and establish some notation, terminology and techniques (Chapter 2). Next, in Chapter 3, we examine the use of latin squares to represent edge and total colourings. In Chapters 4 - 6 we deal with vertex, edge and total colourings respectively. Various ways of measuring different aspects of graphs are presented, in particular, the ‘colouring difference’ between two edge-colourings of a graph (Chapter 5) and the ‘beta parameter’ (defined in Chapter 2 and used in Chapters 3 and 6); this is a measure of how far from a type 1 graph a type 2 graph can be. In Chapter 6 we derive an upper bound for the beta value of any near type 1 graph and give the exact results for all Kn. The number of ways of colouring Kn and Kn,,n are also quantified. Chapter 6 also examines Hilton’s concept of conformability. It is shown that every graph with at least A spines is conformable, and an extension to the concept, which we call G*-conformability, is introduced. We then give new necessary conditions for a cubic graph to be type 1 in relation to G*-conformability. Various methods of manipulating graphs are considered and we present: a method to compatibly triangulate a graph G-e; a method of introducing a fourth colour thus allowing a sequence of Kempe interchanges from any edge 3-colouring of a cubic graph to any other; and a method to re-colour a near type 1 graph within a certain bound on beta. We end this thesis with a brief discussion on possible practical uses for colouring graphs. A list of the main results and conjectures is given at the end of each chapter, but a short list of the principle theorems proven is given below
Topics in graph colouring and extremal graph theory
In this thesis we consider three problems related to colourings of graphs and one problem in extremal graph theory. Let be a connected graph with vertices and maximum degree . Let denote the graph with vertex set all proper -colourings of and two -colourings are joined by an edge if they differ on the colour of exactly one vertex.
Our first main result states that has a unique non-trivial component with diameter . This result can be viewed as a reconfigurations analogue of Brooks' Theorem and completes the study of reconfigurations of colourings of graphs with bounded maximum degree.
A Kempe change is the operation of swapping some colours , of a component of the subgraph induced by vertices with colour or . Two colourings are Kempe equivalent if one can be obtained from the other by a sequence of Kempe changes. Our second main result states that all -colourings of a graph are Kempe equivalent unless is the complete graph or the triangular prism. This settles a conjecture of Mohar (2007).
Motivated by finding an algorithmic version of a structure theorem for bull-free graphs due to Chudnovsky (2012), we consider the computational complexity of deciding if the vertices of a graph can be partitioned into two parts such that one part is triangle-free and the other part is a collection of complete graphs. We show that this problem is NP-complete when restricted to five classes of graphs (including bull-free graphs) while polynomial-time solvable for the class of cographs.
Finally we consider a graph-theoretic version formulated by Holroyd, Spencer and Talbot (2007) of the famous Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado Theorem in extremal combinatorics and obtain some results for the class of trees
A brief history of edge-colorings – with personal reminiscences
In this article we survey some important milestones in the history of edge-colorings of graphs, from the earliest contributions of Peter Guthrie Tait and Dénes König to very recent wor