Hamiltonicity and generalised total colourings of planar graphs

The total generalised colourings considered in this paper are colourings of graphs such that the vertices and edges of the graph which receive the same colour induce subgraphs from two prescribed hereditary graph properties while incident elements receive different colours. The associated total chromatic number is the least number of colours with which this is possible. We study such colourings for sets of planar graphs and determine, in particular, upper bounds for these chromatic numbers for proper colourings of the vertices while the monochromatic edge sets are allowed to be forests. We also prove that if an even planar triangulation has a Hamilton cycle H for which there is no cycle among the edges inside H, then such a graph needs at most four colours for a total colouring as described above. The paper is concluded with some conjectures and open problems.In part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Numbers 90841, 91128).http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/dmgtam2016Mathematics and Applied Mathematic

Acyclic colourings of graphs with bounded degree

Graphs and Algorithm

Acyclic colourings of graphs with bounded degree

Graphs and AlgorithmsA k-colouring of a graph G is called acyclic if for every two distinct colours i and j, the subgraph induced in G by all the edges linking a vertex coloured with i and a vertex coloured with j is acyclic. In other words, there are no bichromatic alternating cycles. In 1999 Boiron et al. conjectured that a graph G with maximum degree at most 3 has an acyclic 2-colouring such that the set of vertices in each colour induces a subgraph with maximum degree at most 2. In this paper we prove this conjecture and show that such a colouring of a cubic graph can be determined in polynomial time. We also prove that it is an NP-complete problem to decide if a graph with maximum degree 4 has the above mentioned colouring