Homomorphisms from sparse graphs to the Petersen graph

Let G be a graph and let c: be an assignment of 2-elements subsets of the set {1,…,5} to the vertices of G such that for any two adjacent vertices u and v,c(u) and c(v) are disjoint. Call such a coloring c a (5, 2)-coloring of G. A graph is (5,2)-colorable if and only if it has a homomorphism to the Petersen graph.The maximum average degree of G is defined as . In this paper, we prove that every triangle-free graph with is homomorphic to the Petersen graph. In other words, such a graph is (5, 2)-colorable. Moreover, we show that the bound on the maximum average degree in our result is best possible.