This paper disproves a conjecture of Wang, Wu, Yan and Xie, and answers in negative a question in Dvorak, Pekarek and Sereni. In return, we pose five open problems.
A graph $G$ is called $3$-choice critical if $G$ is not $2$-choosable but any proper subgraph is $2$-choosable. A characterization of $3$-choice critical graphs was given by Voigt in [On list Colourings and Choosability of Graphs, Habilitationsschrift, Tu Ilmenau(1998)]. Voigt conjectured that if $G$ is a bipartite $3$-choice critical graph, then $G$ is $(4m, 2m)$-choosable for every integer $m$. This conjecture was disproved by Meng, Puleo and Zhu in [On (4, 2)-Choosable Graphs, Journal of Graph Theory 85(2):412-428(2017)]. They showed that if $G=Theta_{r,s,t}$ where $r,s,t$ have the same parity and $min{r,s,t} ge 3$, or $G=Theta_{2,2,2,2p}$ with $p ge 2$, then $G$ is bipartite $3$-choice critical, but not $(4,2)$-choosable. On the other hand, all the other bipartite 3-choice critical graphs are $(4,2)$-choosable. This paper strengthens the result of Meng, Puleo and Zhu and shows that all the other bipartite $3$-choice critical graphs are $(4m,2m)$-choosable for every integer $m$.
3-list colouring is an NP-complete decision problem. It is hard even on planar bipartite graphs. We give a polynomial-time algorithm for solving 3-list colouring on permutation graphs.
List colouring is an NP-complete decision problem even if the total number of colours is three. It is hard even on planar bipartite graphs. We give a polynomial-time algorithm for solving list colouring of permutation graphs with a bounded total number of colours. More generally we give a polynomial-time algorithm that solves the list-homomorphism problem to any fixed target graph for a large class of input graphs including all permutation and interval graphs.
A (not necessarily proper) vertex colouring of a graph has clustering $c$ if every monochromatic component has at most $c$ vertices. We prove that planar graphs with maximum degree $Delta$ are 3-colourable with clustering $O(Delta^2)$. The previous best bound was $O(Delta^{37})$. This result for planar graphs generalises to graphs that can be drawn on a surface of bounded Euler genus with a bounded number of crossings per edge. We then prove that graphs with maximum degree $Delta$ that exclude a fixed minor are 3-colourable with clustering $O(Delta^5)$. The best previous bound for this result was exponential in $Delta$.
A graph is apex if there is a vertex whose deletion makes the graph planar, and doublecross if it can be drawn in the plane with only two crossings, both incident with the infinite region in the natural sense. In 1966, Tutte conjectured that every two-edge-connected cubic graph with no Petersen graph minor is three-edge-colourable. With Neil Robertson, two of us showed that this is true in general if it is true for apex graphs and doublecross graphs. In another paper, two of us solved the apex case, but the doublecross case remained open. Here we solve the doublecross case; that is, we prove that every two-edge-connected doublecross cubic graph is three-edge-colourable. The proof method is a variant on the proof of the four-colour theorem.