Computing clique and chromatic number of circular-perfect graphs in polynomial time

A main result of combinatorial optimization is that clique and chromatic number of a perfect graph are computable in polynomial time (Grötschel et al. in Combinatorica 1(2):169–197, 1981). Perfect graphs have the key property that clique and chromatic number coincide for all induced subgraphs; we address the question whether the algorithmic results for perfect graphs can be extended to graph classes where the chromatic number of all members is bounded by the clique number plus one. We consider a well-studied superclass of perfect graphs satisfying this property, the circular-perfect graphs, and show that for such graphs both clique and chromatic number are computable in polynomial time as well. In addition, we discuss the polynomial time computability of further graph parameters for certain subclasses of circular-perfect graphs. All the results strongly rely upon Lovász’s Theta function.     

Copositive programming motivated bounds on the stability and the chromatic numbers

The Lovász theta number of a graph G can be viewed as a semidefinite programming relaxation of the stability number of G. It has recently been shown that a copositive strengthening of this semidefinite program in fact equals the stability number of G. We introduce a related strengthening of the Lovász theta number toward the chromatic number of G, which is shown to be equal to the fractional chromatic number of G. Solving copositive programs is NP-hard. This motivates the study of tractable approximations of the copositive cone. We investigate the Parrilo hierarchy to approximate this cone and provide computational simplifications for the approximation of the chromatic number of vertex transitive graphs. We provide some computational results indicating that the Lovász theta number can be strengthened significantly toward the fractional chromatic number of G on some Hamming graphs. Partial support by the EU project Algorithmic Discrete Optimization (ADONET), MRTN-CT-2003-504438, is gratefully acknowledged.     

Signed graph coloring

Coloring a signed graph by signed colors, one has a chromatic polynomial with the same enumerative and algebraic properties as for ordinary graphs. New phenomena are the interpretability only of odd arguments and the existence of a second chromatic polynomial counting zero-free colorings. The generalization to voltage graphs is outlined.     

Six-flows on almost balanced signed graphs

In 1983, Bouchet conjectured that every flow-admissible signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 6-flow. By Seymour's 6-flow theorem, Bouchet's conjecture holds for signed graphs with all edges positive. Recently, Rollová et al proved that every flow-admissible signed cubic graph with two negative edges admits a nowhere-zero 7-flow, and admits a nowhere-zero 6-flow if its underlying graph either contains a bridge, or is 3-edge-colorable, or is critical. In this paper, we improve and extend these results, and confirm Bouchet's conjecture for signed graphs with frustration number at most two, where the frustration number of a signed graph is the smallest number of vertices whose deletion leaves a balanced signed graph.     

Lower Bounds for Measurable Chromatic Numbers

The Lovász theta function provides a lower bound for the chromatic number of finite graphs based on the solution of a semidefinite program. In this paper we generalize it so that it gives a lower bound for the measurable chromatic number of distance graphs on compact metric spaces. In particular we consider distance graphs on the unit sphere. There we transform the original infinite semidefinite program into an infinite linear program which then turns out to be an extremal question about Jacobi polynomials which we solve explicitly in the limit. As an application we derive new lower bounds for the measurable chromatic number of the Euclidean space in dimensions 10, . . . , 24 and we give a new proof that it grows exponentially with the dimension.     

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)).     

Lower bounds on the signed domination numbers of directed graphs

A numerical invariant of directed graphs concerning domination which is named signed domination number γ_S is studied in this paper. We present some sharp lower bounds for γ_S in terms of the order, the maximum degree and the chromatic number of a directed graph.     

On the polynomial time computability of the circular-chromatic number for some superclasses of perfect graphs

A main result in combinatorial optimization is that clique and chromatic number of a perfect graph are computable in polynomial time (Grötschel, Lovász and Schrijver 1981). The circular-clique and circular-chromatic number are well-studied refinements of these graph parameters, and circular-perfect graphs form the corresponding superclass of perfect graphs. So far, it is unknown whether the (weighted) circular-clique and circular-chromatic number of a circular-perfect graph are computable in polynomial time. In this paper, we show the polynomial time computability of these two graph parameters for some super-classes of perfect graphs with the help of polyhedral arguments.     

Hypergraphs with Zero Chromatic Threshold

Let F be an r-uniform hypergraph. The chromatic threshold of the family of F-free, r-uniform hypergraphs is the infimum of all non-negative reals c such that the subfamily of F-free, r-uniform hypergraphs H with minimum degree at least \(c \left( {\begin{array}{c}|V(H)|\\ r-1\end{array}}\right) \) has bounded chromatic number. The study of chromatic thresholds of various graphs has a long history, beginning with the early work of Erd?s and Simonovits. One interesting problem, first proposed by ?uczak and Thomassé and then solved by Allen, Böttcher, Griffiths, Kohayakawa and Morris, is the characterization of graphs having zero chromatic threshold, in particular the fact that there are graphs with non-zero Turán density that have zero chromatic threshold. Here, we make progress on this problem for r-uniform hypergraphs, showing that a large class of hypergraphs have zero chromatic threshold in addition to exhibiting a family of constructions showing another large class of hypergraphs have non-zero chromatic threshold. Our construction is based on a particular product of the Bollobás–Erd?s graphs defined earlier by the authors.     

Graphes cubiques d'indice trois,graphes cubiques isochromatiques,graphes cubiques d'indice quatre

The process introduced by E. Johnson [Amer. Math. Monthly73 (1966), 52–55] for constructing connected cubic graphs can be modified so as to obtain restricted classes of cubic graphs, in particular, those defined by their chromatic number or their chromatic index. We construct here the graphs of chromatic number three and the graphs whose chromatic number is equal to its chromatic index (isochromatic graphs). We then give results about the construction of the class of graphs of chromatic index four, and in particular, we construct an infinite class of “snarks.”     

On directed local chromatic number,shift graphs,and Borsuk‐like graphs

We investigate the local chromatic number of shift graphs and prove that it is close to their chromatic number. This implies that the gap between the directed local chromatic number of an oriented graph and the local chromatic number of the underlying undirected graph can be arbitrarily large. We also investigate the minimum possible directed local chromatic number of oriented versions of “topologically t‐chromatic” graphs. We show that this minimum for large enough t‐chromatic Schrijver graphs and t‐chromatic generalized Mycielski graphs of appropriate parameters is ?t/4?+1. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 66: 65‐82, 2010     

Distinguishing chromatic numbers of complements of Cartesian products of complete graphs

The distinguishing chromatic number of a graph, $G$, is the minimum number of colours required to properly colour the vertices of $G$ so that the only automorphism of $G$ that preserves colours is the identity. There are many classes of graphs for which the distinguishing chromatic number has been studied, including Cartesian products of complete graphs (Jerebic and Klav?ar, 2010). In this paper we determine the distinguishing chromatic number of the complement of the Cartesian product of complete graphs, providing an interesting class of graphs, some of which have distinguishing chromatic number equal to the chromatic number, and others for which the difference between the distinguishing chromatic number and chromatic number can be arbitrarily large.     

Some graphs with chromatic number three

A question of P. Erdös is solved by showing that certain graphs have chromatic number at most three. The proof proceeds by showing a conjecture of Erdös and Bollobás holds, namely, that under certain circumstances, a graph which contains an odd circuit must contain an odd circuit with diagonal.     

Total and fractional total colourings of circulant graphs

In this paper, the total chromatic number and the fractional total chromatic number of circulant graphs are studied. For cubic circulant graphs we give upper bounds on the fractional total chromatic number and for 4-regular circulant graphs we find the total chromatic number for some cases and we give the exact value of the fractional total chromatic number in most cases.     

Local Chromatic Number, KY Fan's Theorem, And Circular Colorings

The local chromatic number of a graph was introduced in [14]. It is in between the chromatic and fractional chromatic numbers. This motivates the study of the local chromatic number of graphs for which these quantities are far apart. Such graphs include Kneser graphs, their vertex color-critical subgraphs, the Schrijver (or stable Kneser) graphs; Mycielski graphs, and their generalizations; and Borsuk graphs. We give more or less tight bounds for the local chromatic number of many of these graphs. We use an old topological result of Ky Fan [17] which generalizes the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. It implies the existence of a multicolored copy of the complete bipartite graph K_{⌈t/2⌉,⌊t/2⌋} in every proper coloring of many graphs whose chromatic number t is determined via a topological argument. (This was in particular noted for Kneser graphs by Ky Fan [18].) This yields a lower bound of ⌈t/2⌉ + 1 for the local chromatic number of these graphs. We show this bound to be tight or almost tight in many cases. As another consequence of the above we prove that the graphs considered here have equal circular and ordinary chromatic numbers if the latter is even. This partially proves a conjecture of Johnson, Holroyd, and Stahl and was independently attained by F. Meunier [42]. We also show that odd chromatic Schrijver graphs behave differently, their circular chromatic number can be arbitrarily close to the other extreme. * Research partially supported by the Hungarian Foundation for Scientific Research Grant (OTKA) Nos. T037846, T046376, AT048826, and NK62321. † Research partially supported by the NSERC grant 611470 and the Hungarian Foundation for Scientific Research Grant (OTKA) Nos. T037846, T046234, AT048826, and NK62321.     

Star chromatic numbers of some planar graphs

The concept of the star chromatic number of a graph was introduced by Vince (A. Vince, Star chromatic number, J. Graph Theory 12 (1988), 551–559), which is a natural generalization of the chromatic number of a graph. This paper calculates the star chromatic numbers of three infinite families of planar graphs. More precisely, the first family of planar graphs has star chromatic numbers consisting of two alternating infinite decreasing sequences between 3 and 4; the second family of planar graphs has star chromatic numbers forming an infinite decreasing sequence between 3 and 4; and the third family of planar graphs has star chromatic number 7/2. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 27: 33–42, 1998     

Efficient algorithms for finding critical subgraphs

This paper presents algorithms to find vertex-critical and edge-critical subgraphs in a given graph G, and demonstrates how these critical subgraphs can be used to determine the chromatic number of G. Computational experiments are reported on random and DIMACS benchmark graphs to compare the proposed algorithms, as well as to find lower bounds on the chromatic number of these graphs. We improve the best known lower bound for some of these graphs, and we are even able to determine the chromatic number of some graphs for which only bounds were known.     

A note on a Brooks' type theorem for DP-coloring

Dvořák and Postle introduced DP-coloring of simple graphs as a generalization of list-coloring. They proved a Brooks' type theorem for DP-coloring; and Bernshteyn, Kostochka, and Pron extended it to DP-coloring of multigraphs. However, detailed structure, when a multigraph does not admit DP-coloring, was not specified. In this note, we make this point clear and give the complete structure. This is also motivated by the relation to signed coloring of signed graphs.     

Sabidussi versus Hedetniemi for three variations of the chromatic number

We investigate vector chromatic number (χ _vec ), Lovász V-function of the complement \((\bar \vartheta )\), and quantum chromatic number (χ _q ) from the perspective of graph homomorphisms. We prove an analog of Sabidussi's theorem for each of these parameters, i.e., that for each of the parameters, the value on the Cartesian product of graphs is equal to the maximum of the values on the factors. Interestingly, as a consequence of this result for \(\bar \vartheta\), we obtain analog of Hedetniemi's conjecture, i.e., that the value of \(\bar \vartheta\) on the categorical product of graphs is equal to the minimum of its values on the factors. We conjecture that the analogous results hold for vector and quantum chromatic number, and we prove that this is the case for some special classes of graphs.     

Coloring signed graphs using DFS

We show that depth first search can be used to give a proper coloring of connected signed graphs G using at most \(\Delta (G)\) colors, provided G is different from a balanced complete graph, a balanced cycle of odd length, and an unbalanced cycle of even length, thus giving a new, short proof to the generalization of Brooks’ theorem to signed graphs, first proved by Má?ajová, Raspaud, and ?koviera.