4 research outputs found
On the density of critical graphs with no large cliques
A graph is \textit{-critical} if and every proper
subgraph of is -colorable, and if is a list-assignment for
, then is \textit{-critical} if is not -colorable but every
proper induced subgraph of is. In 2014, Kostochka and Yancey proved a lower
bound on the average degree of an -vertex -critical graph tending to for large that is tight for infinitely many values of ,
and they asked how their bound may be improved for graphs not containing a
large clique. Answering this question, we prove that for , if is sufficiently large and is a -free -critical graph where and is a
list-assignment for such that for all , then
the average degree of is at least . This result implies that for some , for every
graph satisfying where is the size of the largest clique
in and is the maximum average degree of , the
list-chromatic number of is at most .Comment: 26 page
Cliques, Degrees, and Coloring: Expanding the Ο, Ξ, Ο paradigm
Many of the most celebrated and influential results in graph coloring, such as Brooks' Theorem and Vizing's Theorem, relate a graph's chromatic number to its clique number or maximum degree. Currently, several of the most important and enticing open problems in coloring, such as Reed's Conjecture, follow this theme.
This thesis both broadens and deepens this classical paradigm.
In Part~1, we tackle list-coloring problems in which the number of colors available to each vertex depends on its degree, denoted , and the size of the largest clique containing it, denoted . We make extensive use of the probabilistic method in this part.
We conjecture the ``list-local version'' of Reed's Conjecture, that is every graph is -colorable if is a list-assignment such that
for each vertex and , and we prove this for under some mild additional assumptions.
We also conjecture the `` version'' of Reed's Conjecture, even for list-coloring. That is, for , every graph satisfies
\chi_\ell(G) \leq \lceil (1 - \varepsilon)(\mad(G) + 1) + \varepsilon\omega(G)\rceil,
where is the maximum average degree of . We prove this conjecture for small values of , assuming . We actually prove a stronger result that improves bounds on the density of critical graphs without large cliques, a long-standing problem, answering a question of Kostochka and Yancey. In the proof, we use a novel application of the discharging method to find a set of vertices for which any precoloring can be extended to the remainder of the graph using the probabilistic method. Our result also makes progress towards Hadwiger's Conjecture: we improve the best known bound on the chromatic number of -minor free graphs by a constant factor.
We provide a unified treatment of coloring graphs with small clique number. We prove that for sufficiently large, if is a graph of maximum degree at most with list-assignment such that for each vertex ,
and , then is -colorable. This result simultaneously implies three famous results of Johansson from the 90s, as well as the following new bound on the chromatic number of any graph with and for sufficiently large:
In Part~2, we introduce and develop the theory of fractional coloring with local demands. A fractional coloring of a graph is an assignment of measurable subsets of the -interval to each vertex such that adjacent vertices receive disjoint sets, and we think of vertices ``demanding'' to receive a set of color of comparatively large measure. We prove and conjecture ``local demands versions'' of various well-known coloring results in the paradigm, including Vizing's Theorem and Molloy's recent breakthrough bound on the chromatic number of triangle-free graphs.
The highlight of this part is the ``local demands version'' of Brooks' Theorem. Namely, we prove that if is a graph and such that every clique in satisfies and every vertex demands , then has a fractional coloring in which the measure of for each vertex is at least . This result generalizes the Caro-Wei Theorem and improves its bound on the independence number, and it is tight for the 5-cycle