Extremes of the internal energy of the Potts model on cubic graphs

We prove tight upper and lower bounds on the internal energy per particle (expected number of monochromatic edges per vertex) in the anti‐ferromagnetic Potts model on cubic graphs at every temperature and for all . This immediately implies corresponding tight bounds on the anti‐ferromagnetic Potts partition function. Taking the zero‐temperature limit gives new results in extremal combinatorics: the number of q‐colorings of a 3‐regular graph, for any , is maximized by a union of 's. This proves the d = 3 case of a conjecture of Galvin and Tetali.     

Circular coloring of signed graphs

Let ( be two positive integers. We generalize the well‐studied notions of ‐colorings and of the circular chromatic number to signed graphs. This implies a new notion of colorings of signed graphs, and the corresponding chromatic number χ. Some basic facts on circular colorings of signed graphs and on the circular chromatic number are proved, and differences to the results on unsigned graphs are analyzed. In particular, we show that the difference between the circular chromatic number and the chromatic number of a signed graph is at most 1. Indeed, there are signed graphs where the difference is 1. On the other hand, for a signed graph on n vertices, if the difference is smaller than 1, then there exists , such that the difference is at most . We also show that the notion of ‐colorings is equivalent to r‐colorings (see [12] (X. Zhu, Recent developments in circular coloring of graphs, in Topics in Discrete Mathematics Algorithms and Combinatorics Volume 26 , Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2006, pp. 497–550)).     

A rainbow blow‐up lemma

We prove a rainbow version of the blow‐up lemma of Komlós, Sárközy, and Szemerédi for μn‐bounded edge colorings. This enables the systematic study of rainbow embeddings of bounded degree spanning subgraphs. As one application, we show how our blow‐up lemma can be used to transfer the bandwidth theorem of Böttcher, Schacht, and Taraz to the rainbow setting. It can also be employed as a tool beyond the setting of μn‐bounded edge colorings. Kim, Kühn, Kupavskii, and Osthus exploit this to prove several rainbow decomposition results. Our proof methods include the strategy of an alternative proof of the blow‐up lemma given by Rödl and Ruciński, the switching method, and the partial resampling algorithm developed by Harris and Srinivasan.     

Colorings at minimum cost

We define by min_c∑_{u,v}∈E(G)|c(u)−c(v)| the min-costMC(G) of a graph G, where the minimum is taken over all proper colorings c. The min-cost-chromatic numberχ_M(G) is then defined to be the (smallest) number of colors k for which there exists a proper k-coloring c attaining MC(G). We give constructions of graphs G where χ(G) is arbitrarily smaller than χ_M(G). On the other hand, we prove that for every 3-regular graph G^′, χ_M(G^′)≤4 and for every 4-regular line graph G^″, χ_M(G^″)≤5. Moreover, we show that the decision problem whether χ_M(G)=k is -hard for k≥3.     

Randomly coloring random graphs

We consider the problem of generating a coloring of the random graph ??_n,p uniformly at random using a natural Markov chain algorithm: the Glauber dynamics. We assume that there are βΔ colors available, where Δ is the maximum degree of the graph, and we wish to determine the least β = β(p) such that the distribution is close to uniform in O(n log n) steps of the chain. This problem has been previously studied for ??_n,p in cases where np is relatively small. Here we consider the “dense” cases, where np ε [ω ln n, n] and ω = ω(n) → ∞. Our methods are closely tailored to the random graph setting, but we obtain considerably better bounds on β(p) than can be achieved using more general techniques. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2009     

Bi‐arc graphs and the complexity of list homomorphisms

Given graphs G, H, and lists L(v) ? V(H), v ε V(G), a list homomorphism of G to H with respect to the lists L is a mapping f : V(G) → V(H) such that uv ε E(G) implies f(u)f(v) ε E(H), and f(v) ε L(v) for all v ε V(G). The list homomorphism problem for a fixed graph H asks whether or not an input graph G, together with lists L(v) ? V(H), v ε V(G), admits a list homomorphism with respect to L. In two earlier papers, we classified the complexity of the list homomorphism problem in two important special cases: When H is a reflexive graph (every vertex has a loop), the problem is polynomial time solvable if H is an interval graph, and is NP‐complete otherwise. When H is an irreflexive graph (no vertex has a loop), the problem is polynomial time solvable if H is bipartite and H is a circular arc graph, and is NP‐complete otherwise. In this paper, we extend these classifications to arbitrary graphs H (each vertex may or may not have a loop). We introduce a new class of graphs, called bi‐arc graphs, which contains both reflexive interval graphs (and no other reflexive graphs), and bipartite graphs with circular arc complements (and no other irreflexive graphs). We show that the problem is polynomial time solvable when H is a bi‐arc graph, and is NP‐complete otherwise. In the case when H is a tree (with loops allowed), we give a simpler algorithm based on a structural characterization. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 42: 61–80, 2003     

Special Classes of Snarks

We report the most relevant results on the classification, up to isomorphism, of nontrivial simple uncolorable (i.e., the chromatic index equals 4) cubic graphs, called snarks in the literature. Then we study many classes of snarks satisfying certain additional conditions, and investigate the relationships among them. Finally, we discuss connections between the snark family and some significant conjectures of graph theory, and list some problems and open questions which arise naturally in this research.     

Asymmetric 2‐colorings of graphs

We show that the edges of every 3‐connected planar graph except K₄ can be colored with two colors in such a way that the graph has no color‐preserving automorphisms. Also, we characterize all graphs that have the property that their edges can be 2‐colored so that no matter how the graph is embedded in any orientable surface, there is no homeomorphism of the surface that induces a nontrivial color‐preserving automorphism of the graph.     

Randomly coloring planar graphs with fewer colors than the maximum degree

We study Markov chains for randomly sampling k‐colorings of a graph with maximum degree Δ. Our main result is a polynomial upper bound on the mixing time of the single‐site update chain known as the Glauber dynamics for planar graphs when . Our results can be partially extended to the more general case where the maximum eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the graph is at most , for fixed . The main challenge when is the possibility of “frozen” vertices, that is, vertices for which only one color is possible, conditioned on the colors of its neighbors. Indeed, when , even a typical coloring can have a constant fraction of the vertices frozen. Our proofs rely on recent advances in techniques for bounding mixing time using “local uniformity” properties. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 47, 731–759, 2015     

Gallai colorings of non-complete graphs

Gallai-colorings of complete graphs-edge colorings such that no triangle is colored with three distinct colors-occur in various contexts such as the theory of partially ordered sets (in Gallai’s original paper), information theory and the theory of perfect graphs. We extend here Gallai-colorings to non-complete graphs and study the analogue of a basic result-any Gallai-colored complete graph has a monochromatic spanning tree-in this more general setting. We show that edge colorings of a graph H without multicolored triangles contain monochromatic connected subgraphs with at least (α(H)²+α(H)−1)⁻¹|V(H)| vertices, where α(H) is the independence number of H. In general, we show that if the edges of an r-uniform hypergraph H are colored so that there is no multicolored copy of a fixed F then there is a monochromatic connected subhypergraph H₁⊆H such that |V(H₁)|≥c|V(H)| where c depends only on F, r, and α(H).