Equitable colorings of Kronecker products of graphs

For a positive integer k, a graph G is equitably k-colorable if there is a mapping f:V(G)→{1,2,…,k} such that f(x)≠f(y) whenever xy∈E(G) and ||f⁻¹(i)|−|f⁻¹(j)||≤1 for 1≤i<j≤k. The equitable chromatic number of a graph G, denoted by χ₌(G), is the minimum k such that G is equitably k-colorable. The equitable chromatic threshold of a graph G, denoted by , is the minimum t such that G is equitably k-colorable for k≥t. The current paper studies equitable chromatic numbers of Kronecker products of graphs. In particular, we give exact values or upper bounds on χ₌(G×H) and when G and H are complete graphs, bipartite graphs, paths or cycles.     

Equitable list coloring of planar graphs without 4- and 6-cycles

A graph G is equitably k-choosable if for any k-uniform list assignment L, there exists an L-colorable of G such that each color appears on at most vertices. Kostochka, Pelsmajer and West introduced this notion and conjectured that G is equitably k-choosable for k>Δ(G). We prove this for planar graphs with Δ(G)≥6 and no 4- or 6-cycles.     

On hamiltonian colorings for some graphs

For a connected graph G and any two vertices u and v in G, let D(u,v) denote the length of a longest u-v path in G. A hamiltonian coloring of a connected graph G of order n is an assignment c of colors (positive integers) to the vertices of G such that |c(u)−c(v)|+D(u,v)≥n−1 for every two distinct vertices u and v in G. The value of a hamiltonian coloring c is the maximum color assigned to a vertex of G. The hamiltonian chromatic number of G is taken over all hamiltonian colorings c of G. In this paper we discuss the hamiltonian chromatic number of graphs G with . As examples, we determine the hamiltonian chromatic number for a class of caterpillars, and double stars.     

Covering line graphs with equivalence relations

An equivalence graph is a disjoint union of cliques, and the equivalence number of a graph G is the minimum number of equivalence subgraphs needed to cover the edges of G. We consider the equivalence number of a line graph, giving improved upper and lower bounds: . This disproves a recent conjecture that is at most three for triangle-free G; indeed it can be arbitrarily large.To bound we bound the closely related invariant σ(G), which is the minimum number of orientations of G such that for any two edges e,f incident to some vertex v, both e and f are oriented out of v in some orientation. When G is triangle-free, . We prove that even when G is triangle-free, it is NP-complete to decide whether or not σ(G)≤3.     

Complexity results in graph reconstruction

We investigate the relative complexity of the graph isomorphism problem (GI) and problems related to the reconstruction of a graph from its vertex-deleted or edge-deleted subgraphs (in particular, deck checking (DC) and legitimate deck (LD) problems). We show that these problems are closely related for all amounts c?1 of deletion:

(1)

, , , and .

(2)

For all k?2, and .

(3)

For all k?2, .

(4)

.

(5)

For all k?2, .

For many of these results, even the c=1 case was not previously known.Similar to the definition of reconstruction numbers vrn_∃(G) [F. Harary, M. Plantholt, The graph reconstruction number, J. Graph Theory 9 (1985) 451-454] and ern_∃(G) (see [J. Lauri, R. Scapellato Topics in Graph Automorphism and Reconstruction, London Mathematical Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 120]), we introduce two new graph parameters, vrn_∀(G) and ern_∀(G), and give an example of a family {G_n}_n?4 of graphs on n vertices for which vrn_∃(G_n)<vrn_∀(G_n). For every k?2 and n?1, we show that there exists a collection of k graphs on (2^k-1+1)n+k vertices with 2ⁿ 1-vertex-preimages, i.e., one has families of graph collections whose number of 1-vertex-preimages is huge relative to the size of the graphs involved.