Planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number

A colouring of a graph isnonrepetitiveif for every path of even order, thesequence of colours on the first half of the path is different from the sequence of colours onthe second half. We show that planar graphs have nonrepetitive colourings with a boundednumber of colours, thus proving a conjecture of Alon, Grytczuk, Hałuszczak and Riordan(2002). We also generalise this result for graphs of bounded Euler genus, graphs excluding afixed minor, and graphs excluding a fixed topological minor

Nonrepetitive Colourings of Planar Graphs with O(log⁡n)O(\log n) Colours

A vertex colouring of a graph is \emph{nonrepetitive} if there is no path for which the first half of the path is assigned the same sequence of colours as the second half. The \emph{nonrepetitive chromatic number} of a graph $G$ is the minimum integer $k$ such that $G$ has a nonrepetitive $k$-colouring. Whether planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number is one of the most important open problems in the field. Despite this, the best known upper bound is $O(\sqrt{n})$ for $n$-vertex planar graphs. We prove a $O(\log n)$ upper bound

Nonrepetitive colourings of planar graphs with O(log n) colours

A vertex colouring of a graph is nonrepetitive if there is no path for which the first half of the path is assigned the same sequence of colours as the second half. The nonrepetitive chromatic number of a graph G is the minimum integer k such that G has a nonrepetitive k-colouring. Whether planar graphs have bounded nonrepetitive chromatic number is one of the most important open problems in the field. Despite this, the best known upper bound is O(n−−√) for n-vertex planar graphs. We prove a O(logn) upper bound

A note about online nonrepetitive coloring kk-trees

We prove that it is always possible to color online nonrepetitively any (partial) $k$-tree (that is, graphs with tree-width at most $k$) with $4^k$ colors. This implies that it is always possible to color online nonrepetitively cycles, trees and series-parallel graphs with $16$ colors. Our results generalize the respective (offline) nonrepetitive coloring results

The Weak Circular Repetition Threshold Over Large Alphabets

The repetition threshold for words on $n$ letters, denoted \mbox{RT}(n), is the infimum of the set of all $r$ such that there are arbitrarily long $r$-free words over $n$ letters. A repetition threshold for circular words on $n$ letters can be defined in three natural ways, which gives rise to the weak, intermediate, and strong circular repetition thresholds for $n$ letters, denoted \mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{W}}(n), \mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{I}}(n), and \mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{S}}(n), respectively. Currie and the present authors conjectured that \mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{I}}(n)=\mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{W}}(n)=\mbox{RT}(n) for all $n\geq 4$. We prove that \mbox{CRT}_{\mbox{W}}(n)=\mbox{RT}(n) for all $n\geq 45$, which confirms a weak version of this conjecture for all but finitely many values of $n$.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1911.0577

Another approach to non-repetitive colorings of graphs of bounded degree

We propose a new proof technique that aims to be applied to the same problems as the Lov\'asz Local Lemma or the entropy-compression method. We present this approach in the context of non-repetitive colorings and we use it to improve upper-bounds relating different non-repetitive numbers to the maximal degree of a graph. It seems that there should be other interesting applications to the presented approach. In terms of upper-bound our approach seems to be as strong as entropy-compression, but the proofs are more elementary and shorter. The application we provide in this paper are upper bounds for graphs of maximal degree at most $\Delta$: a minor improvement on the upper-bound of the non-repetitive number, a $4.25\Delta +o(\Delta)$ upper-bound on the weak total non-repetitive number and a $\Delta^2+\frac{3}{2^\frac{1}{3}}\Delta^{\frac{5}{3}}+ o(\Delta^{\frac{5}{3}})$ upper-bound on the total non-repetitive number of graphs. This last result implies the same upper-bound for the non-repetitive index of graphs, which improves the best known bound

Clustered 3-Colouring Graphs of Bounded Degree

A (not necessarily proper) vertex colouring of a graph has "clustering" $c$ if every monochromatic component has at most $c$ vertices. We prove that planar graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$ are 3-colourable with clustering $O(\Delta^2)$. The previous best bound was $O(\Delta^{37})$. This result for planar graphs generalises to graphs that can be drawn on a surface of bounded Euler genus with a bounded number of crossings per edge. We then prove that graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$ that exclude a fixed minor are 3-colourable with clustering $O(\Delta^5)$. The best previous bound for this result was exponential in $\Delta$.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1904.0479