A note on Barnette’s conjecture

A well-known conjecture of Barnette states that every 3-connected cubic bipartite planar graph has a Hamiltonian cycle, which is equivalent to the statement that every 3-connected even plane triangulation admits a 2-tree coloring, meaning that the vertices of the graph have a 2-coloring such that each color class induces a tree. In this paper we present a new approach to Barnette’s conjecture by using 2-tree coloring.A Barnette triangulation is a 3-connected even plane triangulation, and a B-graph is a smallest Barnette triangulation without a 2-tree coloring. A configuration is reducible if it cannot be a configuration of a B-graph. We prove that certain configurations are reducible. We also define extendable, non-extendable and compatible graphs; and discuss their connection with Barnette’s conjecture.     

Oriented Coloring of Triangle-Free Planar Graphs and 2-Outerplanar Graphs

A graph is planar if it can be embedded on the plane without edge-crossings. A graph is 2-outerplanar if it has a planar embedding such that the subgraph obtained by removing the vertices of the external face is outerplanar (i.e. with all its vertices on the external face). An oriented k-coloring of an oriented graph G is a homomorphism from G to an oriented graph H of order k. We prove that every oriented triangle-free planar graph has an oriented chromatic number at most 40, that improves the previous known bound of 47 [Borodin, O. V. and Ivanova, A. O., An oriented colouring of planar graphs with girth at least 4, Sib. Electron. Math. Reports, vol. 2, 239–249, 2005]. We also prove that every oriented 2-outerplanar graph has an oriented chromatic number at most 40, that improves the previous known bound of 67 [Esperet, L. and Ochem, P. Oriented colouring of 2-outerplanar graphs, Inform. Process. Lett., vol. 101(5), 215–219, 2007].     

Planar graphs with maximum degree 8 and without adjacent triangles are 9-totally-colorable

The Total Coloring Conjecture, in short, TCC, says that every simple graph is (Δ+2)-totally-colorable where Δ is the maximum degree of the graph. Even for planar graphs this conjecture has not been completely settled yet. However, every planar graph with Δ≥9 has been proved to be (Δ+1)-totally-colorable. In this paper, we prove that planar graphs with maximum degree 8 and without adjacent triangles are 9-totally-colorable.     

Cycle Covers of Planar 2-Edge-Connected Graphs

A graph with n vertices is said to have a small cycle cover provided its edges can be covered with at most (2n ? 1)/3 cycles. Bondy [2] has conjectured that every 2-connected graph has a small cycle cover. In [3] Lai and Lai prove Bondy’s conjecture for plane triangulations. In [1] the author extends this result to all planar 3-connected graphs, by proving that they can be covered by at most (n + 1)/2 cycles. In this paper we show that Bondy’s conjecture holds for all planar 2-connected graphs. We also show that all planar 2-edge-connected graphs can be covered by at most (3n ? 3)/4 cycles and we show an infinite family of graphs for which this bound is attained.     

Subgraphs with Restricted Degrees of Their Vertices in Planar 3-Connected Graphs

We have proved that every 3-connected planar graph G either contains a path on k vertices each of which has degree at most 5k or does not contain any path on k vertices; the bound 5k is the best possible. Moreover, for every connected planar graph H other than a path and for every integer m ≥ 3 there is a 3-connected planar graph G such that each copy of H in G contains a vertex of degree at least m.     

Triangle Contact Representations and Duality

A?contact representation by triangles of a graph is a set of triangles in the plane such that two triangles intersect on at most one point, each triangle represents a vertex of the graph and two triangles intersects if and only if their corresponding vertices are adjacent. De Fraysseix, Ossona de Mendez and Rosenstiehl proved that every planar graph admits a contact representation by triangles. We strengthen this in terms of a simultaneous contact representation by triangles of a planar map and of its dual. A?primal?Cdual contact representation by triangles of a planar map is a contact representation by triangles of the primal and a contact representation by triangles of the dual such that for every edge uv, bordering faces f and g, the intersection between the triangles corresponding to u and v is the same point as the intersection between the triangles corresponding to f and g. We prove that every 3-connected planar map admits a primal?Cdual contact representation by triangles. Moreover, the interiors of the triangles form a tiling of the triangle corresponding to the outer face and each contact point is a corner of exactly three triangles. Then we show that these representations are in one-to-one correspondence with generalized Schnyder woods defined by Felsner for 3-connected planar maps.     

Local condition for planar graphs of maximum degree 7 to be 8-totally colorable

The total chromatic number of a graph G, denoted by χ^″(G), is the minimum number of colors needed to color the vertices and edges of G such that no two adjacent or incident elements get the same color. It is known that if a planar graph G has maximum degree Δ≥9, then χ^″(G)=Δ+1. In this paper, we prove that if G is a planar graph with maximum degree 7, and for every vertex v, there is an integer k_v∈{3,4,5,6} so that v is not incident with any k_v-cycle, then χ^″(G)=8.     

Planar graph coloring with an uncooperative partner

We show that the game chromatic number of a planar graph is at most 33. More generally, there exists a function f: ? → ? so that for each n ∈ ?, if a graph does not contain a homeomorph of K_n, then its game chromatic number is at most f(n). In particular, the game chromatic number of a graph is bounded in terms of its genus. Our proof is motivated by the concept of p-arrangeability, which was first introduced by Guantao and Schelp in a Ramsey theoretic setting.     

Planar functions over fields of characteristic two

Classical planar functions are functions from a finite field to itself and give rise to finite projective planes. They exist however only for fields of odd characteristic. We study their natural counterparts in characteristic two, which we also call planar functions. They again give rise to finite projective planes, as recently shown by the second author. We give a characterisation of planar functions in characteristic two in terms of codes over \(\mathbb {Z}_{4}\) . We then specialise to planar monomial functions f(x)=cx ^t and present constructions and partial results towards their classification. In particular, we show that t=1 is the only odd exponent for which f(x)=cx ^t is planar (for some nonzero c) over infinitely many fields. The proof techniques involve methods from algebraic geometry.     

Planar Graphs, via Well-Orderly Maps and Trees

The family of well-orderly maps is a family of planar maps with the property that every connected planar graph has at least one plane embedding which is a well-orderly map. We show that the number of well-orderly maps with n nodes is at most 2^αn+O(logn), where α≈4.91. A direct consequence of this is a new upper bound on the number p(n) of unlabeled planar graphs with n nodes, log₂p(n)≤4.91n. The result is then used to show that asymptotically almost all (labeled or unlabeled), (connected or not) planar graphs with n nodes have between 1.85n and 2.44n edges. Finally we obtain as an outcome of our combinatorial analysis an explicit linear-time encoding algorithm for unlabeled planar graphs using, in the worst-case, a rate of 4.91 bits per node and of 2.82 bits per edge.     

Characterization of partial 3-trees in terms of three structures

A characterization of partial 3-trees is given based on the elimination sequence of vertices. It is proved that a partial 3-tree contains a vertex set satisfying either of certain three kinds of neighborhood relations on vertices and that a graph is a partial 3-tree if and only if eliminating such a vertex set results in a partial 3-tree. These results yield anO(n ²) time algorithm to recognize 3-trees.     

Planar Crossing Numbers of Graphs of Bounded Genus

Pach and Tóth proved that any n-vertex graph of genus g and maximum degree d has a planar crossing number at most c ^g dn, for a constant c>1. We improve on this result by decreasing the bound to O(dgn), and also prove that our result is tight within a constant factor. Our proof is constructive and yields an algorithm with time complexity O(dgn). As a consequence of our main result, we show a relation between the planar crossing number and the surface crossing number.     

Planar Posets,Dimension, Breadth and the Number of Minimal Elements

In recent years, researchers have shown renewed interest in combinatorial properties of posets determined by geometric properties of its order diagram and topological properties of its cover graph. In most cases, the roots for the problems being studied today can be traced back to the 1970’s, and sometimes even earlier. In this paper, we study the problem of bounding the dimension of a planar poset in terms of the number of minimal elements, where the starting point is the 1977 theorem of Trotter and Moore asserting that the dimension of a planar poset with a single minimal element is at most 3. By carefully analyzing and then refining the details of this argument, we are able to show that the dimension of a planar poset with t minimal elements is at most 2t + 1. This bound is tight for t = 1 and t = 2. But for t ≥ 3, we are only able to show that there exist planar posets with t minimal elements having dimension t + 3. Our lower bound construction can be modified in ways that have immediate connections to the following challenging conjecture: For every d ≥ 2, there is an integer f(d) so that if P is a planar poset with dim(P) ≥ f(d), then P contains a standard example of dimension d. To date, the best known examples only showed that the function f, if it exists, satisfies f(d) ≥ d + 2. Here, we show that lim _d→∞ f(d)/d ≥ 2.     

Planar graphs without 5-cycles or without 6-cycles

Let G be a planar graph without 5-cycles or without 6-cycles. In this paper, we prove that if G is connected and δ(G)≥2, then there exists an edge xy∈E(G) such that d(x)+d(y)≤9, or there is a 2-alternating cycle. By using the above result, we obtain that (1) its linear 2-arboricity , (2) its list total chromatic number is Δ(G)+1 if Δ(G)≥8, and (3) its list edge chromatic number is Δ(G) if Δ(G)≥8.     

Planar Ramsey numbers for cycles

For two given graphs G and H the planar Ramsey number PR(G,H) is the smallest integer n such that every planar graph F on n vertices either contains a copy of G or its complement contains a copy H. By studying the existence of subhamiltonian cycles in complements of sparse graphs, we determine all planar Ramsey numbers for pairs of cycles.     

A Planar linear arboricity conjecture

The linear arboricity la(G) of a graph G is the minimum number of linear forests (graphs where every connected component is a path) that partition the edges of G. In 1984, Akiyama et al. [Math Slovaca 30 (1980), 405–417] stated the Linear Arboricity Conjecture (LAC) that the linear arboricity of any simple graph of maximum degree Δ is either ?Δ/2? or ?(Δ + 1)/2?. In [J. L. Wu, J Graph Theory 31 (1999), 129–134; J. L. Wu and Y. W. Wu, J Graph Theory 58(3) (2008), 210–220], it was proven that LAC holds for all planar graphs. LAC implies that for Δ odd, la(G) = ?Δ/2?. We conjecture that for planar graphs, this equality is true also for any even Δ?6. In this article we show that it is true for any even Δ?10, leaving open only the cases Δ = 6, 8. We present also an O(n logn) algorithm for partitioning a planar graph into max{la(G), 5} linear forests, which is optimal when Δ?9. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory     

Planar graphs without specific cycles are 2-degenerate

A graph G is k-degenerate if each subgraph of G has a vertex of degree at most k. It is known that every simple planar graph with girth 6, or equivalently without 3-, 4-, and 5-cycles, is 2-degenerate. In this work, we investigate for which k every planar graph without 4-, 6-, … , and 2k-cycles is 2-degenerate. We determine that k is 5 and the result is tight since the truncated dodecahedral graph is a 3-regular planar graph without 4-, 6-, and 8-cycles. As a related result, we also show that every planar graph without 4-, 6-, 9-, and 10-cycles is 2-degenerate.     

Untangling Polygons and Graphs

Untangling is a process in which some vertices in a drawing of a planar graph are moved to obtain a straight-line plane drawing. The aim is to move as few vertices as possible. We present an algorithm that untangles the cycle graph C _n while keeping Ω(n ^2/3) vertices fixed. For any connected graph G, we also present an upper bound on the number of fixed vertices in the worst case. The bound is a function of the number of vertices, maximum degree, and diameter of G. One consequence is that every 3-connected planar graph has a drawing δ such that at most O((nlog n)^2/3) vertices are fixed in every untangling of δ.     

Planar graphs with maximum degree 4 are strongly 19-edge-colorable

A strong edge-coloring of a graph is a proper edge-coloring such that edges at distance at most 2 receive different colors. It is known that every planar graph has a strong edge-coloring by using at most $4\Delta +4$ colors, where $\Delta$ denotes the maximum degree of the graph. In this paper, we will show that 19 colors are enough to color a planar graph with maximum degree 4.     

On two problems in graph Ramsey theory

We study two classical problems in graph Ramsey theory, that of determining the Ramsey number of bounded-degree graphs and that of estimating the induced Ramsey number for a graph with a given number of vertices. The Ramsey number r(H) of a graph H is the least positive integer N such that every two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph K _N contains a monochromatic copy of H. A famous result of Chváatal, Rödl, Szemerédi and Trotter states that there exists a constant c(Δ) such that r(H) ≤ c(Δ)n for every graph H with n vertices and maximum degree Δ. The important open question is to determine the constant c(Δ). The best results, both due to Graham, Rödl and Ruciński, state that there are positive constants c and c′ such that $2^{c'\Delta } \leqslant c(\Delta ) \leqslant ^{c\Delta \log ^2 \Delta }$ . We improve this upper bound, showing that there is a constant c for which c(Δ) ≤ 2 ^cΔlogΔ . The induced Ramsey number r _ind (H) of a graph H is the least positive integer N for which there exists a graph G on N vertices such that every two-coloring of the edges of G contains an induced monochromatic copy of H. Erd?s conjectured the existence of a constant c such that, for any graph H on n vertices, r _ind (H) ≤ 2 ^cnlogn . We move a step closer to proving this conjecture, showing that r _ind (H) ≤ 2 ^cnlogn . This improves upon an earlier result of Kohayakawa, Prömel and Rödl by a factor of logn in the exponent.