Partitioning random graphs into monochromatic components

Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'arf\'as, and Pyber (1991) conjectured that every $r$-colored complete graph can be partitioned into at most $r-1$ monochromatic components; this is a strengthening of a conjecture of Lov\'asz (1975) in which the components are only required to form a cover. An important partial result of Haxell and Kohayakawa (1995) shows that a partition into $r$ monochromatic components is possible for sufficiently large $r$-colored complete graphs. We start by extending Haxell and Kohayakawa's result to graphs with large minimum degree, then we provide some partial analogs of their result for random graphs. In particular, we show that if $p\ge \left(\frac{27\log n}{n}\right)^{1/3}$, then a.a.s. in every $2$-coloring of $G(n,p)$ there exists a partition into two monochromatic components, and for $r\geq 2$ if $p\ll \left(\frac{r\log n}{n}\right)^{1/r}$, then a.a.s. there exists an $r$-coloring of $G(n,p)$ such that there does not exist a cover with a bounded number of components. Finally, we consider a random graph version of a classic result of Gy\'arf\'as (1977) about large monochromatic components in $r$-colored complete graphs. We show that if $p=\frac{\omega(1)}{n}$, then a.a.s. in every $r$-coloring of $G(n,p)$ there exists a monochromatic component of order at least $(1-o(1))\frac{n}{r-1}$.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures. Appears in Electronic Journal of Combinatorics Volume 24, Issue 1 (2017) Paper #P1.1

Vertex covering with monochromatic pieces of few colours

In 1995, Erd\H{o}s and Gy\'arf\'as proved that in every $2$-colouring of the edges of $K_n$, there is a vertex cover by $2\sqrt{n}$ monochromatic paths of the same colour, which is optimal up to a constant factor. The main goal of this paper is to study the natural multi-colour generalization of this problem: given two positive integers $r,s$, what is the smallest number $\text{pc}_{r,s}(K_n)$ such that in every colouring of the edges of $K_n$ with $r$ colours, there exists a vertex cover of $K_n$ by $\text{pc}_{r,s}(K_n)$ monochromatic paths using altogether at most $s$ different colours? For fixed integers $r>s$ and as $n\to\infty$, we prove that $\text{pc}_{r,s}(K_n) = \Theta(n^{1/\chi})$, where $\chi=\max{\{1,2+2s-r\}}$ is the chromatic number of the Kneser gr aph $\text{KG}(r,r-s)$. More generally, if one replaces $K_n$ by an arbitrary $n$-vertex graph with fixed independence number $\alpha$, then we have $\text{pc}_{r,s}(G) = O(n^{1/\chi})$, where this time around $\chi$ is the chromatic number of the Kneser hypergraph $\text{KG}^{(\alpha+1)}(r,r-s)$. This result is tight in the sense that there exist graphs with independence number $\alpha$ for which $\text{pc}_{r,s}(G) = \Omega(n^{1/\chi})$. This is in sharp contrast to the case $r=s$, where it follows from a result of S\'ark\"ozy (2012) that $\text{pc}_{r,r}(G)$ depends only on $r$ and $\alpha$, but not on the number of vertices. We obtain similar results for the situation where instead of using paths, one wants to cover a graph with bounded independence number by monochromatic cycles, or a complete graph by monochromatic $d$-regular graphs

Large monochromatic components in edge colored graphs with a minimum degree condition

It is well-known that in every k-coloring of the edges of the complete graph Kn there is a monochromatic connected component of order at least (formula presented)k-1. In this paper we study an extension of this problem by replacing complete graphs by graphs of large minimum degree. For k = 2 the authors proved that δ(G) ≥(formula presented) ensures a monochromatic connected component with at least δ(G) + 1 vertices in every 2-coloring of the edges of a graph G with n vertices. This result is sharp, thus for k = 2 we really need a complete graph to guarantee that one of the colors has a monochromatic connected spanning subgraph. Our main result here is that for larger values of k the situation is different, graphs of minimum degree (1 − ϵk)n can replace complete graphs and still there is a monochromatic connected component of order at least (formula presented), in fact (formula presented) suffices. Our second result is an improvement of this bound for k = 3. If the edges of G with δ(G) ≥ (formula presented) are 3-colored, then there is a monochromatic component of order at least n/2. We conjecture that this can be improved to 9 and for general k we (onjectu) the following: if k ≥ 3 and G is a graph of order n such that δ(G) ≥ (formula presented) n, then in any k-coloring of the edges of G there is a monochromatic connected component of order at least (formula presented). © 2017, Australian National University. All rights reserved

Partitioning a graph into monochromatic connected subgraphs

We show that every 2-edge‐colored graph on vertices with minimum degree at least\frac{2n - 5}{3} can be partitioned into two monochromatic connected subgraphs, provided

Covering graphs by monochromatic trees and Helly-type results for hypergraphs

How many monochromatic paths, cycles or general trees does one need to cover all vertices of a given $r$-edge-coloured graph $G$? These problems were introduced in the 1960s and were intensively studied by various researchers over the last 50 years. In this paper, we establish a connection between this problem and the following natural Helly-type question in hypergraphs. Roughly speaking, this question asks for the maximum number of vertices needed to cover all the edges of a hypergraph $H$ if it is known that any collection of a few edges of $H$ has a small cover. We obtain quite accurate bounds for the hypergraph problem and use them to give some unexpected answers to several questions about covering graphs by monochromatic trees raised and studied by Bal and DeBiasio, Kohayakawa, Mota and Schacht, Lang and Lo, and Gir\~ao, Letzter and Sahasrabudhe.Comment: 20 pages including references plus 2 pages of an Appendi

Monochromatic cycle covers in random graphs

A classic result of Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'arf\'as and Pyber states that for every coloring of the edges of $K_n$ with $r$ colors, there is a cover of its vertex set by at most $f(r) = O(r^2 \log r)$ vertex-disjoint monochromatic cycles. In particular, the minimum number of such covering cycles does not depend on the size of $K_n$ but only on the number of colors. We initiate the study of this phenomena in the case where $K_n$ is replaced by the random graph $\mathcal G(n,p)$. Given a fixed integer $r$ and $p =p(n) \ge n^{-1/r + \varepsilon}$, we show that with high probability the random graph $G \sim \mathcal G(n,p)$ has the property that for every $r$-coloring of the edges of $G$, there is a collection of $f'(r) = O(r^8 \log r)$ monochromatic cycles covering all the vertices of $G$. Our bound on $p$ is close to optimal in the following sense: if $p\ll (\log n/n)^{1/r}$, then with high probability there are colorings of $G\sim\mathcal G(n,p)$ such that the number of monochromatic cycles needed to cover all vertices of $G$ grows with $n$.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure (minor changes, added figure