Random cubic graphs are not homomorphic to the cycle of size 7

We prove that a random cubic graph almost surely is not homomorphic to a cycle of size 7. This implies that there exist cubic graphs of arbitrarily high girth with no homomorphisms to the cycle of size 7

A Breezing Proof of the KMW Bound

In their seminal paper from 2004, Kuhn, Moscibroda, and Wattenhofer (KMW) proved a hardness result for several fundamental graph problems in the LOCAL model: For any (randomized) algorithm, there are input graphs with $n$ nodes and maximum degree $\Delta$ on which $\Omega(\min\{\sqrt{\log n/\log \log n},\log \Delta/\log \log \Delta\})$ (expected) communication rounds are required to obtain polylogarithmic approximations to a minimum vertex cover, minimum dominating set, or maximum matching. Via reduction, this hardness extends to symmetry breaking tasks like finding maximal independent sets or maximal matchings. Today, more than $15$ years later, there is still no proof of this result that is easy on the reader. Setting out to change this, in this work, we provide a fully self-contained and $\mathit{simple}$ proof of the KMW lower bound. The key argument is algorithmic, and it relies on an invariant that can be readily verified from the generation rules of the lower bound graphs.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Ramsey-nice families of graphs

For a finite family $\mathcal{F}$ of fixed graphs let $R_k(\mathcal{F})$ be the smallest integer $n$ for which every $k$-coloring of the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ yields a monochromatic copy of some $F\in\mathcal{F}$. We say that $\mathcal{F}$ is $k$-nice if for every graph $G$ with $\chi(G)=R_k(\mathcal{F})$ and for every $k$-coloring of $E(G)$ there exists a monochromatic copy of some $F\in\mathcal{F}$. It is easy to see that if $\mathcal{F}$ contains no forest, then it is not $k$-nice for any $k$. It seems plausible to conjecture that a (weak) converse holds, namely, for any finite family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$ that contains at least one forest, and for all $k\geq k_0(\mathcal{F})$ (or at least for infinitely many values of $k$), $\mathcal{F}$ is $k$-nice. We prove several (modest) results in support of this conjecture, showing, in particular, that it holds for each of the three families consisting of two connected graphs with 3 edges each and observing that it holds for any family $\mathcal{F}$ containing a forest with at most 2 edges. We also study some related problems and disprove a conjecture by Aharoni, Charbit and Howard regarding the size of matchings in regular 3-partite 3-uniform hypergraphs.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure

Bounds for identifying codes in terms of degree parameters

An identifying code is a subset of vertices of a graph such that each vertex is uniquely determined by its neighbourhood within the identifying code. If \M(G) denotes the minimum size of an identifying code of a graph $G$, it was conjectured by F. Foucaud, R. Klasing, A. Kosowski and A. Raspaud that there exists a constant $c$ such that if a connected graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and maximum degree $d$ admits an identifying code, then \M(G)\leq n-\tfrac{n}{d}+c. We use probabilistic tools to show that for any $d\geq 3$, \M(G)\leq n-\tfrac{n}{\Theta(d)} holds for a large class of graphs containing, among others, all regular graphs and all graphs of bounded clique number. This settles the conjecture (up to constants) for these classes of graphs. In the general case, we prove \M(G)\leq n-\tfrac{n}{\Theta(d^{3})}. In a second part, we prove that in any graph $G$ of minimum degree $\delta$ and girth at least 5, \M(G)\leq(1+o_\delta(1))\tfrac{3\log\delta}{2\delta}n. Using the former result, we give sharp estimates for the size of the minimum identifying code of random $d$-regular graphs, which is about $\tfrac{\log d}{d}n$