Graphs With 3n−6 Edges Not Containing A Subdivision Of K 5

We determine all graphs on n ≥ 3 vertices with 3n-6 edges which do not contain a subdivision of K₅. These are exactly the graphs which one gets from any number of disjoint maximal planar graphs by successively pasting along triangles.     

Dense Minors In Graphs Of Large Girth

We show that a graph of girth greater than 6 log k+3 and minimum degree at least 3 has a minor of minimum degree greater than k. This is best possible up to a factor of at most 9/4. As a corollary, every graph of girth at least 6 log r+3 log log r+c and minimum degree at least 3 has a K _r minor.     

A Construction of Uniquely C4-free colourable Graphs

Abstract

An F-free colouring of a graph G is a partition {V₁,V₂,…,V_n} of the vertex set V(G) of G such that F is not an induced subgraph of G[V_i] for each i. A graph is uniquely F-free colourable if any two .F-free colourings induce the same partition of V(G). We give a constructive proof that uniquely C₄-free colourable graphs exist.     

Minors in ‐ Chromatic Graphs,II

Let denote the graph obtained from the complete graph by deleting the edges of some ‐subgraph. The author proved earlier that for each fixed s and , every graph with chromatic number has a minor. This confirmed a partial case of the corresponding conjecture by Woodall and Seymour. In this paper, we show that the statement holds already for much smaller t, namely, for .     

Colorful Isomorphic Spanning Trees in Complete Graphs

Can a complete graph on an even number n (> 4) of vertices be properly edge-colored with n − 1 colors in such a way that the edges can be partitioned into edge-disjoint colorful isomorphic spanning trees? A spanning treee is colorful if all n − 1 colors occur among its edges. It is proved that this is possible to accomplish whenever n is a power of two.Received July 24, 2001     

Circular Chromatic Number and Mycielski Graphs

As a natural generalization of graph coloring, Vince introduced the star chromatic number of a graph G and denoted it by ^*(G). Later, Zhu called it circular chromatic number and denoted it by _c(G). Let (G) be the chromatic number of G. In this paper, it is shown that if the complement of G is non-hamiltonian, then _c(G)=(G). Denote by M(G) the Mycielski graph of G. Recursively define M^m(G)=M(M^m–1(G)). It was conjectured that if mn–2, then _c(M^m(K_n))=(M^m(K_n)). Suppose that G is a graph on n vertices. We prove that if , then _c(M(G))=(M(G)). Let S be the set of vertices of degree n–1 in G. It is proved that if |S| 3, then _c(M(G))=(M(G)), and if |S| 5, then _c(M²(G))=(M²(G)), which implies the known results of Chang, Huang, and Zhu that if n3, _c(M(K_n))=(M(K_n)), and if n5, then _c(M²(K_n))=(M²(K_n)).* Research supported by Grants from National Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences.     

On Circular Flows Of Graphs

A sufficient condition for graphs with circular flow index less than 4 is found in this paper. In particular, we give a simple proof of a result obtained by Galluccio and Goddyn (Combinatorica, 2002), and obtain a larger family of such graphs. * Partially supported by the National Security Agency under Grants MDA904-01-1-0022.     

Extremal Problems For Transversals In Graphs With Bounded Degree

We introduce and discuss generalizations of the problem of independent transversals. Given a graph property , we investigate whether any graph of maximum degree at most d with a vertex partition into classes of size at least p admits a transversal having property . In this paper we study this problem for the following properties : “acyclic”, “H-free”, and “having connected components of order at most r”. We strengthen a result of [13]. We prove that if the vertex set of a d-regular graph is partitioned into classes of size d+⌞d/r⌟, then it is possible to select a transversal inducing vertex disjoint trees on at most r vertices. Our approach applies appropriate triangulations of the simplex and Sperner’s Lemma. We also establish some limitations on the power of this topological method. We give constructions of vertex-partitioned graphs admitting no independent transversals that partially settles an old question of Bollobás, Erdős and Szemerédi. An extension of this construction provides vertex-partitioned graphs with small degree such that every transversal contains a fixed graph H as a subgraph. Finally, we pose several open questions. * Research supported by the joint Berlin/Zurichgrad uate program Combinatorics, Geometry, Computation, financed by the German Science Foundation (DFG) and ETH Zürich. † Research partially supported by Hungarian National Research Fund grants T-037846, T-046234 and AT-048826.     

Neighborhood Complexes of Stable Kneser Graphs

It is shown that the neighborhood complexes of a family of vertex critical subgraphs of Kneser graphs—the stable Kneser graphs introduced by L. Schrijver—are spheres up to homotopy. Furthermore, it is shown that the neighborhood complexes of a subclass of the stable Kneser graphs contain the boundaries of associahedra (simplicial complexes encoding triangulations of a polygon) as a strong deformation retract.* The first author was partially supported by the Göran Gustafsson Foundation for Research in Natural Sciences and Medicine. The second author was supported by the graduate school Algorithmische Diskrete Mathematik, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, grant GRK 219/3. The DAAD partially supported a stay at KTH, Stockholm, in December 1998, where this work was done: DAAD program AZ 313/S-PPP     

Colorings Of Plane Graphs With No Rainbow Faces

We prove that each n-vertex plane graph with girth g≥4 admits a vertex coloring with at least ⌈n/2⌉+1 colors with no rainbow face, i.e., a face in which all vertices receive distinct colors. This proves a conjecture of Ramamurthi and West. Moreover, we prove for plane graph with girth g≥5 that there is a vertex coloring with at least if g is odd and if g is even. The bounds are tight for all pairs of n and g with g≥4 and n≥5g/2−3. * Supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Slovenia, Research Project Z1-3129 and by a postdoctoral fellowship of PIMS. ** Institute for Theoretical Computer Science is supported by Ministry of Education of CzechR epublic as project LN00A056.     

Transitive Edge Coloring of Graphs and Dimension of Lattices

We explore properties of edge colorings of graphs dened by set intersections. An edge coloring of a graph G with vertex set V ={1,2, . . . , n} is called transitive if one can associate sets F ₁,F ₂, . . .,F _n to vertices of G so that for any two edges ij,kl E(G), the color of ij and kl is the same if and only if F _i F _j = F _k F _l . The term transitive refers to a natural partial order on the color set of these colorings.We prove a canonical Ramsey type result for transitive colorings of complete graphs which is equivalent to a stronger form of a conjecture of A. Sali on hypergraphs. This—through the reduction of Sali—shows that the dimension of n-element lattices is o(n) as conjectured by Füredi and Kahn.The proof relies on concepts and results which seem to have independent interest. One of them is a generalization of the induced matching lemma of Ruzsa and Szemerédi for transitive colorings. * Research supported in part by OTKA Grant T029074.     

Total Colorings Of Degenerate Graphs

A total coloring of a graph G is a coloring of all elements of G, i.e. vertices and edges, such that no two adjacent or incident elements receive the same color. A graph G is s-degenerate for a positive integer s if G can be reduced to a trivial graph by successive removal of vertices with degree ≤s. We prove that an s-degenerate graph G has a total coloring with Δ+1 colors if the maximum degree Δ of G is sufficiently large, say Δ≥4s+3. Our proof yields an efficient algorithm to find such a total coloring. We also give a lineartime algorithm to find a total coloring of a graph G with the minimum number of colors if G is a partial k-tree, that is, the tree-width of G is bounded by a fixed integer k.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic"> K</Emphasis><Subscript>6</Subscript>-Minors in Projective Planar Graphs

It is shown that every 5-connected graph embedded in the projective plane with face-width at least 3 contains the complete graph on 6 vertices as a minor.* Supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Slovenia, Research Project J1-0502-0101-98.     

Decomposing Berge Graphs Containing No Proper Wheel, Long Prism Or Their Complements

In this paper we show that, if G is a Berge graph such that neither G nor its complement contains certain induced subgraphs, named proper wheels and long prisms, then either G is a basic perfect graph( a bipartite graph, a line graph of a bipartite graph or the complement of such graphs) or it has a skew partition that cannot occur in a minimally imperfect graph. This structural result implies that G is perfect. This work was supported in part by NSF grant DMI-0352885 and ONR grant N00014-03-1-0188.     

On the Chromatic Number of Triangle-Free Graphs of Large Minimum Degree

We prove that, for each xed real number c > 1/3, the triangle-free graphs of minimum degree at least cn (where n is the number of vertices) have bounded chromatic number. This problem was raised by Erds and Simonovits in 1973 who pointed out that there is no such result for c < 1/3.     

On The Chromatic Number Of Pentagon-Free Graphs Of Large Minimum Degree

We prove that, for each fixed real number c > 0, the pentagon-free graphs of minimum degree at least cn (where n is the number of vertices) have bounded chromatic number. This problem was raised by Erdős and Simonovits in 1973. A similar result holds for any other fixed odd cycle, except the triangle for which there is no such result for c<1/3.     

Two Tree-Width-Like Graph Invariants

In this paper we introduce two tree-width-like graph invariants. The first graph invariant, which we denote by ⁼(G), is defined in terms of positive semi-definite matrices and is similar to the graph invariant (G), introduced by Colin de Verdière in [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B., 74:121–146, 1998]. The second graph invariant, which we denote by (G), is defined in terms of a certain connected subgraph property and is similar to (G), introduced by van der Holst, Laurent, and Schrijver in [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B., 65:291–304, 1995]. We give some theorems on the behaviour of these invariants under certain transformations. We show that ⁼(G)=(G) for any graph G with ⁼(G)4, and we give minimal forbidden minor characterizations for the graphs satisfying ⁼(G)k for k=1,2,3,4.This paper is extracted from two chapters of [7]. This work was done while the author was at the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.     

Laplacians and the Cheeger Inequality for Directed Graphs

We consider Laplacians for directed graphs and examine their eigenvalues. We introduce a notion of a circulation in a directed graph and its connection with the Rayleigh quotient. We then define a Cheeger constant and establish the Cheeger inequality for directed graphs. These relations can be used to deal with various problems that often arise in the study of non-reversible Markov chains including bounding the rate of convergence and deriving comparison theorems.Received September 8, 2004     

Graphs with maximal signless Laplacian spectral radius

By the signless Laplacian of a (simple) graph G we mean the matrix Q(G)=D(G)+A(G), where A(G),D(G) denote respectively the adjacency matrix and the diagonal matrix of vertex degrees of G. It is known that connected graphs G that maximize the signless Laplacian spectral radius ρ(Q(G)) over all connected graphs with given numbers of vertices and edges are (degree) maximal. For a maximal graph G with n vertices and r distinct vertex degrees δ_r>δ_r-1>?>δ₁, it is proved that ρ(Q(G))<ρ(Q(H)) for some maximal graph H with n+1 (respectively, n) vertices and the same number of edges as G if either G has precisely two dominating vertices or there exists an integer such that δ_i+δ_r+1-i?n+1 (respectively, δ_i+δ_r+1-i?δ_l+δ_r-l+1). Graphs that maximize ρ(Q(G)) over the class of graphs with m edges and m-k vertices, for k=0,1,2,3, are completely determined.     

Partitioning Graphs of Bounded Tree-Width

Received: October 10, 1996