Acyclic edge-coloring using entropy compression

An edge-coloring of a graph G is acyclic if it is a proper edge-coloring of G and every cycle contains at least three colors. We prove that every graph with maximum degree Delta has an acyclic edge-coloring with at most 4 Delta - 4 colors, improving the previous bound of 9.62 (Delta - 1). Our bound results from the analysis of a very simple randomised procedure using the so-called entropy compression method. We show that the expected running time of the procedure is O(mn Delta^2 log Delta), where n and m are the number of vertices and edges of G. Such a randomised procedure running in expected polynomial time was only known to exist in the case where at least 16 Delta colors were available. Our aim here is to make a pedagogic tutorial on how to use these ideas to analyse a broad range of graph coloring problems. As an application, also show that every graph with maximum degree Delta has a star coloring with 2 sqrt(2) Delta^{3/2} + Delta colors.Comment: 13 pages, revised versio

A general framework for coloring problems: old results, new results, and open problems

In this survey paper we present a general framework for coloring problems that was introduced in a joint paper which the author presented at WG2003. We show how a number of different types of coloring problems, most of which have been motivated from frequency assignment, fit into this framework. We give a survey of the existing results, mainly based on and strongly biased by joint work of the author with several different groups of coauthors, include some new results, and discuss several open problems for each of the variants

Injective colorings of graphs with low average degree

Let \mad(G) denote the maximum average degree (over all subgraphs) of $G$ and let $\chi_i(G)$ denote the injective chromatic number of $G$. We prove that if $\Delta\geq 4$ and \mad(G)<\frac{14}5, then $\chi_i(G)\leq\Delta+2$. When $\Delta=3$, we show that \mad(G)<\frac{36}{13} implies $\chi_i(G)\le 5$. In contrast, we give a graph $G$ with $\Delta=3$, \mad(G)=\frac{36}{13}, and $\chi_i(G)=6$.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

Exhaustive generation of kk-critical H\mathcal H-free graphs

We describe an algorithm for generating all $k$-critical $\mathcal H$-free graphs, based on a method of Ho\`{a}ng et al. Using this algorithm, we prove that there are only finitely many $4$-critical $(P_7,C_k)$-free graphs, for both $k=4$ and $k=5$. We also show that there are only finitely many $4$-critical graphs $(P_8,C_4)$-free graphs. For each case of these cases we also give the complete lists of critical graphs and vertex-critical graphs. These results generalize previous work by Hell and Huang, and yield certifying algorithms for the $3$-colorability problem in the respective classes. Moreover, we prove that for every $t$, the class of 4-critical planar $P_t$-free graphs is finite. We also determine all 27 4-critical planar $(P_7,C_6)$-free graphs. We also prove that every $P_{10}$-free graph of girth at least five is 3-colorable, and determine the smallest 4-chromatic $P_{12}$-free graph of girth five. Moreover, we show that every $P_{13}$-free graph of girth at least six and every $P_{16}$-free graph of girth at least seven is 3-colorable. This strengthens results of Golovach et al.Comment: 17 pages, improved girth results. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1504.0697

Schnyder decompositions for regular plane graphs and application to drawing

Schnyder woods are decompositions of simple triangulations into three edge-disjoint spanning trees crossing each other in a specific way. In this article, we define a generalization of Schnyder woods to $d$-angulations (plane graphs with faces of degree $d$) for all $d\geq 3$. A \emph{Schnyder decomposition} is a set of $d$ spanning forests crossing each other in a specific way, and such that each internal edge is part of exactly $d-2$ of the spanning forests. We show that a Schnyder decomposition exists if and only if the girth of the $d$-angulation is $d$. As in the case of Schnyder woods ($d=3$), there are alternative formulations in terms of orientations ("fractional" orientations when $d\geq 5$) and in terms of corner-labellings. Moreover, the set of Schnyder decompositions on a fixed $d$-angulation of girth $d$ is a distributive lattice. We also show that the structures dual to Schnyder decompositions (on $d$-regular plane graphs of mincut $d$ rooted at a vertex $v^*$) are decompositions into $d$ spanning trees rooted at $v^*$ such that each edge not incident to $v^*$ is used in opposite directions by two trees. Additionally, for even values of $d$, we show that a subclass of Schnyder decompositions, which are called even, enjoy additional properties that yield a reduced formulation; in the case d=4, these correspond to well-studied structures on simple quadrangulations (2-orientations and partitions into 2 spanning trees). In the case d=4, the dual of even Schnyder decompositions yields (planar) orthogonal and straight-line drawing algorithms. For a 4-regular plane graph $G$ of mincut 4 with $n$ vertices plus a marked vertex $v$, the vertices of $G\backslash v$ are placed on a $(n-1) \times (n-1)$ grid according to a permutation pattern, and in the orthogonal drawing each of the $2n-2$ edges of $G\backslash v$ has exactly one bend. Embedding also the marked vertex $v$ is doable at the cost of two additional rows and columns and 8 additional bends for the 4 edges incident to $v$. We propose a further compaction step for the drawing algorithm and show that the obtained grid-size is strongly concentrated around $25n/32\times 25n/32$ for a uniformly random instance with $n$ vertices