No Arabic abstract
A $k$-linear coloring of a graph $G$ is an edge coloring of $G$ with $k$ colors so that each color class forms a linear forest -- a forest whose each connected component is a path. The linear arboricity $chi_l(G)$ of $G$ is the minimum integer $k$ such that there exists a $k$-linear coloring of $G$. Akiyama, Exoo and Harary conjectured in 1980 that for every graph $G$, $chi_l(G)leq left lceil frac{Delta(G)+1}{2}rightrceil$ where $Delta(G)$ is the maximum degree of $G$. First, we prove the conjecture for 3-degenerate graphs. This establishes the conjecture for graphs of treewidth at most 3 and provides an alternative proof for the conjecture in some classes of graphs like cubic graphs and triangle-free planar graphs for which the conjecture was already known to be true. Next, for every 2-degenerate graph $G$, we show that $chi_l(G)=leftlceilfrac{Delta(G)}{2}rightrceil$ if $Delta(G)geq 5$. We conjecture that this equality holds also when $Delta(G)in{3,4}$ and show that this is the case for some well-known subclasses of 2-degenerate graphs. All our proofs can be converted into linear time algorithms.
We prove an inequality involving the degeneracy, the cutwidth and the sparsity of graphs. It implies a quadratic lower bound on the cutwidth in terms of the degeneracy for all graphs and an improvement of it for clique-free graphs.
Tuza famously conjectured in 1981 that in a graph without k+1 edge-disjoint triangles, it suffices to delete at most 2k edges to obtain a triangle-free graph. The conjecture holds for graphs with small treewidth or small maximum average degree, including planar graphs. However, for dense graphs that are neither cliques nor 4-colorable, only asymptotic results are known. Here, we confirm the conjecture for threshold graphs, i.e. graphs that are both split graphs and cographs, and for co-chain graphs with both sides of the same size divisible by 4.
Arboricity is a graph parameter akin to chromatic number, in that it seeks to partition the vertices into the smallest number of sparse subgraphs. Where for the chromatic number we are partitioning the vertices into independent sets, for the arboricity we want to partition the vertices into cycle-free subsets (i.e., forests). Arboricity is NP-hard in general, and our focus is on the arboricity of cographs. For arboricity two, we obtain the complete list of minimal cograph obstructions. These minimal obstructions do generalize to higher arboricities; however, we no longer have a complete list, and in fact, the number of minimal cograph obstructions grows exponentially with arboricity. We obtain bounds on their size and the height of their cotrees. More generally, we consider the following common generalization of colouring and partition into forests: given non-negative integers $p$ and $q$, we ask if a given cograph $G$ admits a vertex partition into $p$ forests and $q$ independent sets. We give a polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm for this problem. In fact, the algorithm solves a more general problem which also includes several other problems such as finding a maximum $q$-colourable subgraph, maximum subgraph of arboricity-$p$, minimum vertex feedback set and minimum $q$ of a $q$-colourable vertex feedback set.
We initiate a systematic study of the fractional vertex-arboricity of planar graphs and demonstrate connections to open problems concerning both fractional coloring and the size of the largest induced forest in planar graphs. In particular, the following three long-standing conjectures concern the size of a largest induced forest in a planar graph, and we conjecture that each of these can be generalized to the setting of fractional vertex-arboricity. In 1979, Albertson and Berman conjectured that every planar graph has an induced forest on at least half of its vertices, in 1987, Akiyama and Watanabe conjectured that every bipartite planar graph has an induced forest on at least five-eighths of its vertices, and in 2010, Kowalik, Luv{z}ar, and v{S}krekovski conjectured that every planar graph of girth at least five has an induced forest on at least seven-tenths of its vertices. We make progress toward the fractional generalization of the latter of these, by proving that every planar graph of girth at least five has fractional vertex-arboricity at most $2 - 1/324$.
Tuza (1981) conjectured that the size $tau(G)$ of a minimum set of edges that intersects every triangle of a graph $G$ is at most twice the size $ u(G)$ of a maximum set of edge-disjoint triangles of $G$. In this paper we present three results regarding Tuzas Conjecture. We verify it for graphs with treewidth at most $6$; we show that $tau(G)leq frac{3}{2}, u(G)$ for every planar triangulation $G$ different from $K_4$; and that $tau(G)leqfrac{9}{5}, u(G) + frac{1}{5}$ if $G$ is a maximal graph with treewidth 3. Our first result strengthens a result of Tuza, implying that $tau(G) leq 2, u(G)$ for every $K_8$-free chordal graph $G$.