Optimal 1-planar graphs which triangulate other surfaces

We show that, for any given non-spherical orientable closed surface F², there exists an optimal 1-planar graph which can be embedded on F² as a triangulation. On the other hand, we prove that there does not exist any such graph for the nonorientable closed surfaces of genus at most 3.     

2‐connected 7‐coverings of 3‐connected graphs on surfaces

An m‐covering of a graph G is a spanning subgraph of G with maximum degree at most m. In this paper, we shall show that every 3‐connected graph on a surface with Euler genus k ≥ 2 with sufficiently large representativity has a 2‐connected 7‐covering with at most 6k ? 12 vertices of degree 7. We also construct, for every surface F² with Euler genus k ≥ 2, a 3‐connected graph G on F² with arbitrarily large representativity each of whose 2‐connected 7‐coverings contains at least 6k ? 12 vertices of degree 7. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 43: 26–36, 2003     

Nowhere-zero flows in low genus graphs

A nowhere-zero k-flow is an assignment of edge directions and integer weights in the range 1,…, k ? 1 to the edges of an undirected graph such that at every vertex the flow in is equal to the flow out. Tutte has conjectured that every bridgeless graph has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. We show that a counterexample to this conjecture, minimal in the class of graphs embedded in a surface of fixed genus, has no face-boundary of length <7. Moreover, in order to prove or disprove Tutte's conjecture for graphs of fixed genus γ, one has to check graphs of order at most 28(γ ? 1) in the orientable case and 14(γ ? 2) in the nonorientable case. So, in particular, it follows immediately that every bridgeless graph of orientable genus ?1 or nonorientable genus ?2 has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. Using a computer, we checked that all graphs of orientable genus ?2 or nonorientable genus ?4 have a nowhere-zero 5-flow.     

The number of defective colorings of graphs on surfaces

A (k, 1)‐coloring of a graph is a vertex‐coloring with k colors such that each vertex is permitted at most 1 neighbor of the same color. We show that every planar graph has at least cρⁿ distinct (4, 1)‐colorings, where c is constant and ρ≈1.466 satisfies ρ³ = ρ² + 1. On the other hand for any ε>0, we give examples of planar graphs with fewer than c(? + ε)ⁿ distinct (4, 1)‐colorings, where c is constant and . Let γ(S) denote the chromatic number of a surface S. For every surface S except the sphere, we show that there exists a constant c′ = c′(S)>0 such that every graph embeddable in S has at least c′2ⁿ distinct (γ(S), 1)‐colorings. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 28:129‐136, 2011     

Tutte's 5-flow conjecture for graphs of nonorientable genus 5

We develop four constructions for nowhere-zero 5-flows of 3-regular graphs that satisfy special structural conditions. Using these constructions we show a minimal counter-example to Tutte's 5-Flow Conjecture is of order ≥44 and therefore every bridgeless graph of nonorientable genus ≤5 has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. One of the structural properties is formulated in terms of the structure of the multigraph G(F) obtained from a given 3-regular graph G by contracting the cycles of a 2-factor F in G. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An Euler‐genus approach to the calculation of the crosscap‐number polynomial

In 1994, J. Chen, J. Gross, and R. Rieper demonstrated how to use the rank of Mohar's overlap matrix to calculate the crosscap‐number distribution, that is, the distribution of the embeddings of a graph in the nonorientable surfaces. That has ever since been by far the most frequent way that these distributions have been calculated. This article introduces a way to calculate the Euler‐genus polynomial of a graph, which combines the orientable and the nonorientable embeddings, without using the overlap matrix. The crosscap‐number polynomial for the nonorientable embeddings is then easily calculated from the Euler‐genus polynomial and the genus polynomial.     

Unique and faithful embeddings of projective-planar graphs

A graph G is uniquely embeddable in a surface F² if for any two embeddings f₁,f₂: G → F², there exists an isomorphism σ: G → G and a homeomorphism h: F² → F² for which h → f₁ = f₂ σ. A graph G is faithfully embeddable in a surface F² if G admits an embedding f: G → F² such that for any isomorphism σ: G → G, there is a homeomorphism h: F² → F² with h → f = f → σ. It will be shown that if a projective-planar graph G is 5-connected and contains a subdivision of the complete graph K₆ as its subgraph, then G is uniquely embeddable in a projective plane, and that moreover if G is not isomorphic to K₆, then G is faithfully embeddable in a projective plane.     

Size ramsey numbers of stars versus 4‐chromatic graphs

We investigate the asymptotics of the size Ramsey number î(K_1,nF), where K_1,n is the n‐star and F is a fixed graph. The author 11 has recently proved that r?(K_1,n,F)=(1+o(1))n² for any F with chromatic number χ(F)=3. Here we show that r?(K_1,n,F)≤ n²+o(n²), if χ (F) ≥ 4 and conjecture that this is sharp. We prove the case χ(F)=4 of the conjecture, that is, that r?(K_1,n,F)=(4+o(1))n² for any 4‐chromatic graph F. Also, some general lower bounds are obtained. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 42: 220–233, 2003     

List‐coloring the square of a subcubic graph

The square G² of a graph G is the graph with the same vertex set G and with two vertices adjacent if their distance in G is at most 2. Thomassen showed that every planar graph G with maximum degree Δ(G) = 3 satisfies χ(G²) ≤ 7. Kostochka and Woodall conjectured that for every graph, the list‐chromatic number of G² equals the chromatic number of G², that is, χ_l(G²) = χ(G²) for all G. If true, this conjecture (together with Thomassen's result) implies that every planar graph G with Δ(G) = 3 satisfies χ_l(G²) ≤ 7. We prove that every connected graph (not necessarily planar) with Δ(G) = 3 other than the Petersen graph satisfies χ_l(G²) ≤8 (and this is best possible). In addition, we show that if G is a planar graph with Δ(G) = 3 and girth g(G) ≥ 7, then χ_l(G²) ≤ 7. Dvo?ák, ?krekovski, and Tancer showed that if G is a planar graph with Δ(G) = 3 and girth g(G) ≥ 10, then χ_l(G²) ≤6. We improve the girth bound to show that if G is a planar graph with Δ(G) = 3 and g(G) ≥ 9, then χ_l(G²) ≤ 6. All of our proofs can be easily translated into linear‐time coloring algorithms. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 57: 65–87, 2008     

Classification of Regular Embeddings of Complete Multipartite Graphs

A 2‐cell embedding of a graph Γ into a closed (orientable or nonorientable) surface is called regular if its automorphism group acts regularly on the flags. In this article, we classify the regular embeddings of the complete multipartite graph $K_{n,\dots ,n}$. We show that if the number of partite sets is greater than 3, there exists no such embedding; and if the number of partite sets is 3, for any n, there exist one orientable regular embedding and one nonorientable regular embedding of $K_{n,n,n}$ up to isomorphism.     

On self duality of pathwidth in polyhedral graph embeddings

Let G be a 3‐connected planar graph and G^* be its dual. We show that the pathwidth of G^* is at most 6 times the pathwidth of G. We prove this result by relating the pathwidth of a graph with the cut‐width of its medial graph and we extend it to bounded genus embeddings. We also show that there exist 3‐connected planar graphs such that the pathwidth of such a graph is at least 1.5 times the pathwidth of its dual. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 55: 42–54, 2007     

Weak Borel chromatic numbers

Given a graph G whose set of vertices is a Polish space X, the weak Borel chromatic number of G is the least size of a family of pairwise disjoint G ‐independent Borel sets that covers all of X. Here a set of vertices of a graph G is independent if no two vertices in the set are connected by an edge. We show that it is consistent with an arbitrarily large size of the continuum that every closed graph on a Polish space either has a perfect clique or has a weak Borel chromatic number of at most ?₁. We observe that some weak version of Todorcevic's Open Coloring Axiom for closed colorings follows from MA. Slightly weaker results hold for F_σ‐graphs. In particular, it is consistent with an arbitrarily large size of the continuum that every locally countable F_σ‐graph has a Borel chromatic number of at most ?₁. We refute various reasonable generalizations of these results to hypergraphs (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

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.     

n-Tuple Coloring of Planar Graphs with Large Odd Girth

 The main result of the papzer is that any planar graph with odd girth at least 10k−7 has a homomorphism to the Kneser graph G _k ^{2 k +1}, i.e. each vertex can be colored with k colors from the set {1,2,…,2k+1} so that adjacent vertices have no colors in common. Thus, for example, if the odd girth of a planar graph is at least 13, then the graph has a homomorphism to G ₂ ⁵, also known as the Petersen graph. Other similar results for planar graphs are also obtained with better bounds and additional restrictions. Received: June 14, 1999 Final version received: July 5, 2000     

3-Colorable Even Embeddings on Closed Surfaces

It is known that for any closed surface F², every even embedding on F² with sufficiently large representativity is 4-colorable. In this paper, we shall characterize 3-colorable even embeddings on F² with sufficiently large representativity.     

The 2-extendability of 5-connected graphs on surfaces with large representativity

A graph with at least 2k+2 vertices is said to be k-extendable if any independent set of k edges in it extends to a perfect matching. We shall show that every 5-connected graph G of even order embedded on a closed surface F², except the sphere, is 2-extendable if ρ(G)?7−2χ(F²), where ρ(G) stands for the representativity of G on F² and χ(F²) for the Euler characteristic of F².     

Even Embeddings of the Complete Graphs and Their Cycle Parities

The complete graph on n vertices can be quadrangularly embedded on an orientable (resp. nonorientable) closed surface F² with Euler characteristic if and only if (resp. and ). In this article, we shall show that if quadrangulates a closed surface F², then has a quadrangular embedding on F² so that the length of each closed walk in the embedding has the parity specified by any given homomorphism , called the cycle parity.     

Note on the cochromatic number of several surfaces

The cochromatic number of a graph G, denoted by z(G), is the minimum number of subsets into which the vertex set of G can be partitioned so that each subset induces an empty or a complete subgraph of G. In an earlier work, the author considered the problem of determining z(S), the maximum cochromatic number among all graphs that embed in a surface S. The value of z(S) was found for the sphere, the Klein bottle, and for the nonorientable surface of genus 4. In this note, some recent results of Albertson and Hutchinson are used to determine the cochromatic numbers of the projective plane and the nonorientable surface of genus 3. These results lend further evidence to support the conjecture that z(S) is equal to the maximum n for which the graph G_n = K₁ U K₂ U … U K_n embeds in S.     

The chromatic Ramsey number of odd wheels

We prove that the chromatic Ramsey number of every odd wheel W_{2k+ 1}, k?2 is 14. That is, for every odd wheel W_{2k+ 1}, there exists a 14‐chromatic graph F such that when the edges of F are two‐coloured, there is a monochromatic copy of W_{2k+ 1} in F, and no graph F with chromatic number 13 has the same property. We ask whether a natural extension of odd wheels to the family of generalized Mycielski graphs could help to prove the Burr–Erd?s–Lovász conjecture on the minimum possible chromatic Ramsey number of an n‐chromatic graph. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 69:198‐205, 2012     

On the vertex face total chromatic number of planar graphs

Let G be a planar graph. The vertex face total chromatic number _χ13(G) of G is the least number of colors assigned to V(G)∪F(G) such that no adjacent or incident elements receive the same color. The main results of this paper are as follows: (1) We give the vertex face total chromatic number for all outerplanar graphs and modulus 3-regular maximal planar graphs. (2) We prove that if G is a maximal planar graph or a lower degree planar graph, i.e., ∠(G) ≤ 3, then _χ13(G) ≤ 6. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.