Curve pseudo-visibility graphs generalize polygon and pseudo-polygon visibility graphs and form a hereditary class of graphs. We prove that every curve pseudo-visibility graph with clique number $omega$ has chromatic number at most $3cdot 4^{omega-1}$. The proof is carried through in the setting of ordered graphs; we identify two conditions satisfied by every curve pseudo-visibility graph (considered as an ordered graph) and prove that they are sufficient for the claimed bound. The proof is algorithmic: both the clique number and a colouring with the claimed number of colours can be computed in polynomial time.
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 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.
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 $G$ 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 $m$.
In this paper we introduce the notion of $Sigma$-colouring of a graph $G$: For given subsets $Sigma(v)$ of neighbours of $v$, for every $vin V(G)$, this is a proper colouring of the vertices of $G$ such that, in addition, vertices that appear together in some $Sigma(v)$ receive different colours. This concept generalises the notion of colouring the square of graphs and of cyclic colouring of graphs embedded in a surface. We prove a general result for graphs embeddable in a fixed surface, which implies asymptot