On Structure of Some Plane Graphs with Application to Choosability

AbstractA graph G=(V, E) is (x, y)-choosable for integers x>y⩾1 if for any given family {A(v)∣v∈V} of sets A(v) of cardinality x, there exists a collection {B(v)∣v∈V} of subsets B(v)⊂A(v) of cardinality y such that B(u)∩B(v)=∅ whenever uv∈E(G). In this paper, structures of some plane graphs, including plane graphs with minimum degree 4, are studied. Using these results, we may show that if G is free of k-cycles for some k∈{3, 4, 5, 6}, or if any two triangles in G have distance at least 2, then G is (4m, m)-choosable for all nonnegative integers m. When m=1, (4m, m)-choosable is simply 4-choosable. So these conditions are also sufficient for a plane graph to be 4-choosable

A new approach to nonrepetitive sequences

A sequence is nonrepetitive if it does not contain two adjacent identical blocks. The remarkable construction of Thue asserts that 3 symbols are enough to build an arbitrarily long nonrepetitive sequence. It is still not settled whether the following extension holds: for every sequence of 3-element sets $L_1,..., L_n$ there exists a nonrepetitive sequence $s_1, ..., s_n$ with $s_i\in L_i$. Applying the probabilistic method one can prove that this is true for sufficiently large sets $L_i$. We present an elementary proof that sets of size 4 suffice (confirming the best known bound). The argument is a simple counting with Catalan numbers involved. Our approach is inspired by a new algorithmic proof of the Lov\'{a}sz Local Lemma due to Moser and Tardos and its interpretations by Fortnow and Tao. The presented method has further applications to nonrepetitive games and nonrepetitive colorings of graphs.Comment: 5 pages, no figures.arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1103.381