Extension of Gyarfas-Sumner conjecture to digraphs


Abstract in English

The dichromatic number of a digraph $D$ is the minimum number of colors needed to color its vertices in such a way that each color class induces an acyclic digraph. As it generalizes the notion of the chromatic number of graphs, it has been a recent center of study. In this work we look at possible extensions of Gyarfas-Sumner conjecture. More precisely, we propose as a conjecture a simple characterization of finite sets $mathcal F$ of digraphs such that every oriented graph with sufficiently large dichromatic number must contain a member of $mathcal F$ as an induce subdigraph. Among notable results, we prove that oriented triangle-free graphs without a directed path of length $3$ are $2$-colorable. If condition of triangle-free is replaced with $K_4$-free, then we have an upper bound of $414$. We also show that an orientation of complete multipartite graph with no directed triangle is 2-colorable. To prove these results we introduce the notion of emph{nice sets} that might be of independent interest.

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