No Arabic abstract
It is an open problem whether the 3-coloring problem can be solved in polynomial time in the class of graphs that do not contain an induced path on $t$ vertices, for fixed $t$. We propose an algorithm that, given a 3-colorable graph without an induced path on $t$ vertices, computes a coloring with $max{5,2lceil{frac{t-1}{2}}rceil-2}$ many colors. If the input graph is triangle-free, we only need $max{4,lceil{frac{t-1}{2}}rceil+1}$ many colors. The running time of our algorithm is $O((3^{t-2}+t^2)m+n)$ if the input graph has $n$ vertices and $m$ edges.
We introduce a new subclass of chordal graphs that generalizes split graphs, which we call well-partitioned chordal graphs. Split graphs are graphs that admit a partition of the vertex set into cliques that can be arranged in a star structure, the leaves of which are of size one. Well-partitioned chordal graphs are a generalization of this concept in the following two ways. First, the cliques in the partition can be arranged in a tree structure, and second, each clique is of arbitrary size. We provide a characterization of well-partitioned chordal graphs by forbidden induced subgraphs, and give a polynomial-time algorithm that given any graph, either finds an obstruction, or outputs a partition of its vertex set that asserts that the graph is well-partitioned chordal. We demonstrate the algorithmic use of this graph class by showing that two variants of the problem of finding pairwise disjoint paths between k given pairs of vertices is in FPT parameterized by k on well-partitioned chordal graphs, while on chordal graphs, these problems are only known to be in XP. From the other end, we observe that there are problems that are polynomial-time solvable on split graphs, but become NP-complete on well-partitioned chordal graphs.
The first-fit coloring is a heuristic that assigns to each vertex, arriving in a specified order $sigma$, the smallest available color. The problem Grundy Coloring asks how many colors are needed for the most adversarial vertex ordering $sigma$, i.e., the maximum number of colors that the first-fit coloring requires over all possible vertex orderings. Since its inception by Grundy in 1939, Grundy Coloring has been examined for its structural and algorithmic aspects. A brute-force $f(k)n^{2^{k-1}}$-time algorithm for Grundy Coloring on general graphs is not difficult to obtain, where $k$ is the number of colors required by the most adversarial vertex ordering. It was asked several times whether the dependency on $k$ in the exponent of $n$ can be avoided or reduced, and its answer seemed elusive until now. We prove that Grundy Coloring is W[1]-hard and the brute-force algorithm is essentially optimal under the Exponential Time Hypothesis, thus settling this question by the negative. The key ingredient in our W[1]-hardness proof is to use so-called half-graphs as a building block to transmit a color from one vertex to another. Leveraging the half-graphs, we also prove that b-Chromatic Core is W[1]-hard, whose parameterized complexity was posed as an open question by Panolan et al. [JCSS 17]. A natural follow-up question is, how the parameterized complexity changes in the absence of (large) half-graphs. We establish fixed-parameter tractability on $K_{t,t}$-free graphs for b-Chromatic Core and Partial Grundy Coloring, making a step toward answering this question. The key combinatorial lemma underlying the tractability result might be of independent interest.
We generalize a result of Balister, Gy{H{o}}ri, Lehel and Schelp for hypergraphs. We determine the unique extremal structure of an $n$-vertex, $r$-uniform, connected, hypergraph with the maximum number of hyperedges, without a $k$-Berge-path, where $n geq N_{k,r}$, $kgeq 2r+13>17$.
This paper is concerned with efficiently coloring sparse graphs in the distributed setting with as few colors as possible. According to the celebrated Four Color Theorem, planar graphs can be colored with at most 4 colors, and the proof gives a (sequential) quadratic algorithm finding such a coloring. A natural problem is to improve this complexity in the distributed setting. Using the fact that planar graphs contain linearly many vertices of degree at most 6, Goldberg, Plotkin, and Shannon obtained a deterministic distributed algorithm coloring $n$-vertex planar graphs with 7 colors in $O(log n)$ rounds. Here, we show how to color planar graphs with 6 colors in $mbox{polylog}(n)$ rounds. Our algorithm indeed works more generally in the list-coloring setting and for sparse graphs (for such graphs we improve by at least one the number of colors resulting from an efficient algorithm of Barenboim and Elkin, at the expense of a slightly worst complexity). Our bounds on the number of colors turn out to be quite sharp in general. Among other results, we show that no distributed algorithm can color every $n$-vertex planar graph with 4 colors in $o(n)$ rounds.
DP-coloring is a generalization of list coloring, which was introduced by Dvov{r}{a}k and Postle [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 129 (2018) 38--54]. Zhang [Inform. Process. Lett. 113 (9) (2013) 354--356] showed that every planar graph with neither adjacent triangles nor 5-, 6-, 9-cycles is 3-choosable. Liu et al. [Discrete Math. 342 (2019) 178--189] showed that every planar graph without 4-, 5-, 6- and 9-cycles is DP-3-colorable. In this paper, we show that every planar graph with neither adjacent triangles nor 5-, 6-, 9-cycles is DP-3-colorable, which generalizes these results. Yu et al. gave three Bordeaux-type results by showing that (i) every planar graph with the distance of triangles at least three and no 4-, 5-cycles is DP-3-colorable; (ii) every planar graph with the distance of triangles at least two and no 4-, 5-, 6-cycles is DP-3-colorable; (iii) every planar graph with the distance of triangles at least two and no 5-, 6-, 7-cycles is DP-3-colorable. We also give two Bordeaux-type results in the last section: (i) every plane graph with neither 5-, 6-, 8-cycles nor triangles at distance less than two is DP-3-colorable; (ii) every plane graph with neither 4-, 5-, 7-cycles nor triangles at distance less than two is DP-3-colorable.