Properly coloured copies and rainbow copies of large graphs with small maximum degree

Let G be a graph on n vertices with maximum degree D. We use the Lov\'asz local lemma to show the following two results about colourings c of the edges of the complete graph K_n. If for each vertex v of K_n the colouring c assigns each colour to at most (n-2)/22.4D^2 edges emanating from v, then there is a copy of G in K_n which is properly edge-coloured by c. This improves on a result of Alon, Jiang, Miller, and Pritikin [Random Struct. Algorithms 23(4), 409-433, 2003]. On the other hand, if c assigns each colour to at most n/51D^2 edges of K_n, then there is a copy of G in K_n such that each edge of G receives a different colour from c. This proves a conjecture of Frieze and Krivelevich [Electron. J. Comb. 15(1), R59, 2008]. Our proofs rely on a framework developed by Lu and Sz\'ekely [Electron. J. Comb. 14(1), R63, 2007] for applying the local lemma to random injections. In order to improve the constants in our results we use a version of the local lemma due to Bissacot, Fern\'andez, Procacci, and Scoppola [preprint, arXiv:0910.1824].Comment: 9 page

H-Colouring Bipartite Graphs

For graphs G and H, an H-colouring of G (or homomorphism from G to H) is a function from the vertices of G to the vertices of H that preserves adjacency. H-colourings generalize such graph theory notions as proper colourings and independent sets. For a given H, k∈V(H) and G we consider the proportion of vertices of G that get mapped to k in a uniformly chosen H-colouring of G. Our main result concerns this quantity when G is regular and bipartite. We find numbers 0⩽a−(k)⩽a+(k)⩽1 with the property that for all such G, with high probability the proportion is between a−(k) and a+(k), and we give examples where these extremes are achieved. For many H we have a−(k)=a+(k) for all k and so in these cases we obtain a quite precise description of the almost sure appearance of a randomly chosen H-colouring. As a corollary, we show that in a uniform proper q-colouring of a regular bipartite graph, if q is even then with high probability every colour appears on a proportion close to 1/q of the vertices, while if q is odd then with high probability every colour appears on at least a proportion close to 1/(q+1) of the vertices and at most a proportion close to 1/(q−1) of the vertices. Our results generalize to natural models of weighted H-colourings, and also to bipartite graphs which are sufficiently close to regular. As an application of this latter extension we describe the typical structure of H-colourings of graphs which are obtained from n-regular bipartite graphs by percolation, and we show that p=1/n is a threshold function across which the typical structure changes. The approach is through entropy, and extends work of J. Kahn, who considered the size of a randomly chosen independent set of a regular bipartite graph