A Brooks‐Type Theorem for the Bichromatic Number

A classical theorem of Brooks in graph coloring theory states that every connected graph G has its chromatic number less than or equal to its maximum degree , unless G is a complete graph or an odd cycle in which case is equal to . Brooks' theorem has been extended to list colorings by Erd?s, Rubin, and Taylor (and, independently, by Vizing) and to some of their variants such as list T‐colorings and pair‐list colorings. The bichromatic number is a relatively new parameter arisen in the study of extremal hereditary properties of graphs. This parameter simultaneously generalizes the chromatic number and the clique covering number of a graph. In this article, we prove a theorem, akin to that of Brooks, which states that every graph G has its bichromatic number less than or equal to its bidegree , unless G belongs to a set of specified graphs in which case is equal to .     

Clique minors in double‐critical graphs

A connected t‐chromatic graph G is double‐critical if is ‐colorable for each edge . A long‐standing conjecture of Erdős and Lovász that the complete graphs are the only double‐critical t‐chromatic graphs remains open for all . Given the difficulty in settling Erdős and Lovász's conjecture and motivated by the well‐known Hadwiger's conjecture, Kawarabayashi, Pedersen, and Toft proposed a weaker conjecture that every double‐critical t‐chromatic graph contains a minor and verified their conjecture for . Albar and Gonçalves recently proved that every double‐critical 8‐chromatic graph contains a K₈ minor, and their proof is computer assisted. In this article, we prove that every double‐critical t‐chromatic graph contains a minor for all . Our proof for is shorter and computer free.     

Some results on cyclic interval edge colorings of graphs

A proper edge coloring of a graph G with colors is called a cyclic interval t‐coloring if for each vertex v of G the edges incident to v are colored by consecutive colors, under the condition that color 1 is considered as consecutive to color t. We prove that a bipartite graph G of even maximum degree admits a cyclic interval ‐coloring if for every vertex v the degree satisfies either or . We also prove that every Eulerian bipartite graph G with maximum degree at most eight has a cyclic interval coloring. Some results are obtained for ‐biregular graphs, that is, bipartite graphs with the vertices in one part all having degree a and the vertices in the other part all having degree b; it has been conjectured that all these have cyclic interval colorings. We show that all (4, 7)‐biregular graphs as well as all ‐biregular () graphs have cyclic interval colorings. Finally, we prove that all complete multipartite graphs admit cyclic interval colorings; this proves a conjecture of Petrosyan and Mkhitaryan.     

Thoroughly dispersed colorings

We consider (not necessarily proper) colorings of the vertices of a graph where every color is thoroughly dispersed, that is, appears in every open neighborhood. Equivalently, every color is a total dominating set. We define as the maximum number of colors in such a coloring and as the fractional version thereof. In particular, we show that every claw‐free graph with minimum degree at least  two has  and this is best possible. For planar graphs, we show that every triangular disc has and this is best possible, and that every planar graph has and this is best possible, while we conjecture that every planar triangulation has . Further, although there are arbitrarily large examples of connected, cubic graphs with , we show that for a connected cubic graph . We also consider the related concepts in hypergraphs.     

Smallest domination number and largest independence number of graphs and forests with given degree sequence

For a sequence d of nonnegative integers, let and be the sets of all graphs and forests with degree sequence d, respectively. Let , , , and where is the domination number and is the independence number of a graph G. Adapting results of Havel and Hakimi, Rao showed in 1979 that can be determined in polynomial time. We establish the existence of realizations with , and with and that have strong structural properties. This leads to an efficient algorithm to determine for every given degree sequence d with bounded entries as well as closed formulas for and .     

Edge‐colorings avoiding rainbow stars

We consider an extremal problem motivated by a article of Balogh [J. Balogh, A remark on the number of edge colorings of graphs, European Journal of Combinatorics 27, 2006, 565–573], who considered edge‐colorings of graphs avoiding fixed subgraphs with a prescribed coloring. More precisely, given , we look for n‐vertex graphs that admit the maximum number of r‐edge‐colorings such that at most colors appear in edges incident with each vertex, that is, r‐edge‐colorings avoiding rainbow‐colored stars with t edges. For large n, we show that, with the exception of the case , the complete graph is always the unique extremal graph. We also consider generalizations of this problem.     

Packing odd T‐joins with at most two terminals

Take a graph G, an edge subset , and a set of terminals where is even. The triple is called a signed graft. A T‐join is odd if it contains an odd number of edges from Σ. Let ν be the maximum number of edge‐disjoint odd T‐joins. A signature is a set of the form where and is even. Let τ be the minimum cardinality a T‐cut or a signature can achieve. Then and we say that packs if equality holds here. We prove that packs if the signed graft is Eulerian and it excludes two special nonpacking minors. Our result confirms the Cycling Conjecture for the class of clutters of odd T‐joins with at most two terminals. Corollaries of this result include, the characterizations of weakly and evenly bipartite graphs, packing two‐commodity paths, packing T‐joins with at most four terminals, and a new result on covering edges with cuts.     

Sufficient conditions for the existence of a path‐factor which are related to odd components

In this article, we are concerned with sufficient conditions for the existence of a ‐factor. We prove that for , there exists such that if a graph G satisfies for all , then G has a ‐factor, where is the number of components C of with . On the other hand, we construct infinitely many graphs G having no ‐factor such that for all .     

Nonseparating Cycles Avoiding Specific Vertices

Thomassen proved that every ‐connected graph G contains an induced cycle C such that is k‐connected, establishing a conjecture of Lovász. In general, one could ask the following question: For any positive integers , does there exist a smallest positive integer such that for any ‐connected graph G, any with , and any , there is an induced cycle C in such that and is l‐connected? The case when is a well‐known conjecture of Lovász that is still open for . In this article, we prove and . We also consider a weaker version: For any positive integers , is there a smallest positive integer such that for every ‐connected graph G and any with , there is an induced cycle C in such that is l‐connected? The case when was studied by Thomassen. We prove and .     

On the Structure of Graphs with Given Odd Girth and Large Minimum Degree

We study minimum degree conditions for which a graph with given odd girth has a simple structure. For example, the classical work of Andrásfai, Erd?s, and Sós implies that every n‐vertex graph with odd girth and minimum degree bigger than must be bipartite. We consider graphs with a weaker condition on the minimum degree. Generalizing results of Häggkvist and of Häggkvist and Jin for the cases and 3, we show that every n‐vertex graph with odd girth and minimum degree bigger than is homomorphic to the cycle of length . This is best possible in the sense that there are graphs with minimum degree and odd girth that are not homomorphic to the cycle of length . Similar results were obtained by Brandt and Ribe‐Baumann.     

Ramsey Results for Cycle Spectra

Let denote the set of lengths of cycles of a graph G of order n and let denote the complement of G. We show that if , then contains all odd ? with and all even ? with , where and denote the maximum odd and the maximum even integer in , respectively. From this we deduce that the set contains at least integers, which is sharp.     

A simple formula for the number of spanning trees of line graphs

Suppose is a loopless graph and is the graph obtained from G by subdividing each of its edges k () times. Let be the set of all spanning trees of G, be the line graph of the graph and be the number of spanning trees of . By using techniques from electrical networks, we first obtain the following simple formula: Then we find it is in fact equivalent to a complicated formula obtained recently using combinatorial techniques in [F. M. Dong and W. G. Yan, Expression for the number of spanning trees of line graphs of arbitrary connected graphs, J. Graph Theory. 85 (2017) 74–93].     

Two Questions of Erdős on Hypergraphs above the Turán Threshold

For ordinary graphs it is known that any graph G with more edges than the Turán number of must contain several copies of , and a copy of , the complete graph on vertices with one missing edge. Erd?s asked if the same result is true for , the complete 3‐uniform hypergraph on s vertices. In this note, we show that for small values of n, the number of vertices in G, the answer is negative for . For the second property, that of containing a , we show that for the answer is negative for all large n as well, by proving that the Turán density of is greater than that of .     

Edge‐transitive homogeneous factorizations of complete uniform hypergraphs

For a finite set V and a positive integer k with , letting be the set of all k‐subsets of V, the pair is called the complete k‐hypergraph on V, while each k‐subset of V is called an edge. A factorization of the complete k‐hypergraph of index , simply a ‐factorization of order n, is a partition of the edges into s disjoint subsets such that each k‐hypergraph , called a factor, is a spanning subhypergraph of . Such a factorization is homogeneous if there exist two transitive subgroups G and M of the symmetric group of degree n such that G induces a transitive action on the set and M lies in the kernel of this action. In this article, we give a classification of homogeneous factorizations of that admit a group acting transitively on the edges of . It is shown that, for and , there exists an edge‐transitive homogeneous ‐factorization of order n if and only if is one of (32, 3, 5), (32, 3, 31), (33, 4, 5), , and , where and q is a prime power with .     

Edge‐Disjoint Spanning Trees,Edge Connectivity,and Eigenvalues in Graphs

Let and denote the second largest eigenvalue and the maximum number of edge‐disjoint spanning trees of a graph G, respectively. Motivated by a question of Seymour on the relationship between eigenvalues of a graph G and bounds of , Cioab? and Wong conjectured that for any integers and a d‐regular graph G, if , then . They proved the conjecture for , and presented evidence for the cases when . Thus the conjecture remains open for . We propose a more general conjecture that for a graph G with minimum degree , if , then . In this article, we prove that for a graph G with minimum degree δ, each of the following holds.

• (i) For , if and , then .
• (ii) For , if and , then .

Our results sharpen theorems of Cioab? and Wong and give a partial solution to Cioab? and Wong's conjecture and Seymour's problem. We also prove that for a graph G with minimum degree , if , then the edge connectivity is at least k, which generalizes a former result of Cioab?. As corollaries, we investigate the Laplacian and signless Laplacian eigenvalue conditions on and edge connectivity.     

A Density Turán Theorem

Let F be a graph that contains an edge whose deletion reduces its chromatic number. For such a graph F , a classical result of Simonovits from 1966 shows that every graph on vertices with more than edges contains a copy of F . In this article we derive a similar theorem for multipartite graphs. For a graph H and an integer , let be the minimum real number such that every ?‐partite graph whose edge density between any two parts is greater than contains a copy of H . Our main contribution in this article is to show that for all sufficiently large if and only if H admits a vertex‐coloring with colors such that all color classes but one are independent sets, and the exceptional class induces just a matching. When H is a complete graph, this recovers a result of Pfender (Combinatorica 32 (2012), 483–495). We also consider several extensions of Pfender's result.     

Rainbow spanning trees in complete graphs colored by one‐factorizations

Brualdi and Hollingsworth conjectured that, for even n, in a proper edge coloring of using precisely colors, the edge set can be partitioned into spanning trees which are rainbow (and hence, precisely one edge from each color class is in each spanning tree). They proved that there always are two edge disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Krussel, Marshall, and Verrall improved this to three edge disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Recently, Carraher, Hartke and the author proved a theorem improving this to rainbow spanning trees, even when more general edge colorings of are considered. In this article, we show that if is properly edge colored with colors, a positive fraction of the edges can be covered by edge disjoint rainbow spanning trees.     

A relaxation of the strong Bordeaux Conjecture

Let be k nonnegative integers. A graph G is ‐colorable if the vertex set can be partitioned into k sets , such that the subgraph , induced by , has maximum degree at most for . Let denote the family of plane graphs with neither adjacent 3‐cycles nor 5‐cycles. Borodin and Raspaud (2003) conjectured that each graph in is (0, 0, 0)‐colorable (which was disproved very recently). In this article, we prove that each graph in is (1, 1, 0)‐colorable, which improves the results by Xu (2009) and Liu‐Li‐Yu (2016).     

List Coloring with a Bounded Palette

Král' and Sgall (J Graph Theory 49(3) (2005), 177–186) introduced a refinement of list coloring where every color list must be subset to one predetermined palette of colors. We call this ‐choosability when the palette is of size at most ? and the lists must be of size at least k . They showed that, for any integer , there is an integer , satisfying as , such that, if a graph is ‐choosable, then it is C‐choosable, and asked if C is required to be exponential in k . We demonstrate it must satisfy . For an integer , if is the least integer such that a graph is ‐choosable if it is ‐choosable, then we more generally supply a lower bound on , one that is super‐polynomial in k if , by relation to an extremal set theoretic property. By the use of containers, we also give upper bounds on that improve on earlier bounds if .