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

Injective choosability of subcubic planar graphs with girth 6

An injective coloring of a graph G is an assignment of colors to the vertices of G so that any two vertices with a common neighbor have distinct colors. A graph G is injectively k-choosable if for any list assignment L, where |L(v)| ≥ k for all v ∈ V(G), G has an injective L-coloring. Injective colorings have applications in the theory of error-correcting codes and are closely related to other notions of colorability. In this paper, we show that subcubic planar graphs with girth at least 6 are injectively 5-choosable. This strengthens the result of Lužar, Škrekovski, and Tancer that subcubic planar graphs with girth at least 7 are injectively 5-colorable. Our result also improves several other results in particular cases