# Tag Info

28

You should check the Hajós calculus. Hajós showed that every graph with chromatic number at least $k$ has a subgraph which has a "reason" for requiring $k$ colors. The reason in question is a proof system for requiring $k$ colors. The only axiom is $K_k$, and there are two rules of inference. See also this paper by Pitassi and Urquhart on the efficiency of ...

23

Some of you are probably aware of this, but the 17 x 17 coloring problem has been solved by Bernd Steinbach and Christian Posthoff. See Gasarch's blog post here.

16

perfect graphs were first motivated by information transmission theory originating with Shannon ie Shannon Capacity of graphs. they are called "perfect" by Berge because they can be used to model a noiseless or "perfect" information channel wrt transposition errors in transmission called "confounding". from intro in [3] which also has a very detailed history ...

15

A partial answer, in that I don't know a nice "reason" that can be generalised, but the following graph (shameless nicked from here): Isn't 3-colorable, but is obviously 4-colorable (being planar), and it contains no $K_{4}$, nor any cycle with a additional vertex connected to all the cycle vertices (unless I'm missing something, but the only vertices ...

15

This problem is NP-hard and APX-hard; see: Adamaszek and Popa, Approximation and Hardness Results for the Maximum Edge $q$-coloring Problem, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6507 (2010) 132-143. The parameterized complexity aspects of this problem is addressed in this recent paper.

13

Your problem is equivalent to maximum matching. In an optimal coloring, each color class is connected. Choosing one edge from each color class, we get a matching. This shows that the maximum matching is at least the antichromatic number. In the other direction, take any maximal matching, and color each of the pairs using a different color. Every other vertex ...

13

$2$-coloring $s$-uniform hypergraphs is also called Set Splitting, problem [SP4] in Garey-Johnson book. The hardness proof is due to Lovasz in this paper.

12

Lovasz found topological obstructions for k-colorability and used his theory to solve Knaser's conjecture. His theorem is the following. Let G be a connected graph, and let N(G) be a simplicial complex whose faces are subsets of V that have a common neighbors. Then if N(K) is k-connected (namely, all its reduced homology groups are 0 up to dimension k-1) ...

12

Compute a maximum matching in the complement of the input graph. Every unmatched node must be in a different color class in any coloring. So: if you get at least cn matched edges, then the matching itself gives you a coloring with an upper bound of (1-c)n, and an approximation ratio of 64(1-c). If you don't get at least cn edges, then you get a lower bound ...

12

In the paper Absolute Planar Retracts and the Four Color Conjecture, Pavol Hell proved several equivalente formulations for the 4CT. One of them reads as follows: Every planar graph is 4-colorable (The 4CT) iff there exists an absolute planar retract. (A subgraph $H$ of a graph $G$ is a retract of $G$ if there exists a homomorphism $r: V(G)\to V(H)$ ...

11

Obviously if $f(\Delta)=2\Delta$ then the bound holds. However, I doubt this is what you meant. Perhaps you meant $\chi(G) \leq f(\frac n k)$, in which case the answer is no, there is no such function. Let $\alpha$ be the size of a maximum independent set in $G$. Then it is easy to see that the fractional chromatic number satisfies the bound $\chi_f(G)\... 11 Proposition 2.4 in this paper http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012365X9500109A# gives another formulation for the 4CT. Edit: For a given graph$G$, the graph$\Delta(G)$has the edges of$G$as its vertices; two edges of$G$are adjacent in$\Delta(G)$if they span a triangle in$G$. Then the 4CT can be stated as follows: For every planar ... 11 Dror Bar-Natan's paper "Lie Algebras and the Four Color Theorem" (Combinatorica 17-1 (1997) 43-52, last updated October 1999, arXiv:q-alg/9606016) contains an appealing statement about Lie algebras that is equivalent to the Four Color Theorem. The notions appearing in the statement also appear in the theory of finite-type invariants of knots (Vassiliev ... 11 Yes. If I understood correctly, the proof of Theorem 1.6 in Khot (2001) establishes that it is NP-hard to distinguish between the following two cases, even if we focus on bounded-degree graphs of sufficiently high degree: There is a$k$-colouring. The ratio of the number of vertices to the maximum size of an independent set is at least$k^{\log(k)/25}$. ... 11 Re your reformulation of the question as "More precisely, what I need is some theorem of the form: A graph$G$has chromatic number$\chi(G)=k+1$if and only if...": I don't know whether you will think this is adequately explanatory, but it at least fits the syntax you request: an undirected graph$G$has chromatic number$\chi(G)\ge k$if and only if, no ... 11 Not having a large independent set can be as important as having a large clique. An important obstruction for a graph to be non k-colorable is that the maximum size of an independent set is smaller than n/k, where n is the number of vertices. This is a very important obstraction. For example it implies that a random graph in G(n,1/2) has chromatic number at ... 11 Here are the references: S. Khanna, N. Linial, and S. Safra, On the hardness of approximating the chromatic number, Combinatoria, 20 (2000), pp. 393–415. C. Lund and M. Yannakakis, On the hardness of approximating minimization problems, J. ACM, 41 (1994), pp. 960–981. 11 There are much stronger results for approximate graph coloring. S. Khot, Improved inapproximability results for maxclique, chromatic number and approximate graph coloring. show that for all sufficiently large constants$k$it is NP-hard to color a$k$-colorable graph with$k^{\Omega(log k)}$colors A very recent result of S. Huang Improved Hardness of ... 11 The following claim is known to me, but may not count because it is unpublished: Any graph on$n$vertices can be colored so that any induced subgraph$H$of chromatic number at most$k$uses at most$\chi(H)+B$colors, where$B(B+1)\leq 2kn$. This is a proof by induction; the motivation was to consider colorings which use few colors not only on the graph ... 10 It looks fairly similar to Coloring random graphs online without creating monochromatic subgraphs (Reto Spöhel, Torsten Mütze, and Thomas Rast) Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA '11), PR 137, 145-158. SODA PDF Journal version Conference proceedings 10 Not quite what you ask for, but here's a lower bound - a graph for which any coloring will result in an independent set colored by$\sqrt{n}$colors: Take$\sqrt{n}$copies of$K_{\sqrt{n}}$, and connect all vertices to a single vertex$s$. Obviously, every set of$\sqrt{n}$vertices from different$K$'s is independent, and in every copy of$K_{\sqrt{n}}$... 9 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneser_graph 9 As David pointed out, Khot's paper, "Improved Inapproximability Results for MaxClique, Chromatic Number and Approximate Graph Coloring", Theorem 1.6, says it is NP-hard to color$K$-colorable graph with$2^{\Omega((\log K)^2)}$colors for graphs with degree at most$2^{2^{(\log K)^2}}$, for sufficiently large constant$K$. In other words, for graphs of ... 9 The Lovász$\vartheta$function is an efficiently computable function with the property $$\alpha(G) \leq \vartheta(G) \leq \bar{\chi}(G),$$ where$\alpha$is independence number and$\bar{\chi}$is clique cover number. If the bound$\frac{\bar{\chi}(G)}{\alpha(G)} \leq n^{1-\varepsilon}$were true for some constant$\varepsilon > 0$, then we would have ... 9 There are non-obvious improvements over simple brute-force search for$k$-coloring (and for many other NP-hard problems). The obvious approach would take roughly$k^n$time, but one can do it in time$O(2^n \cdot poly(n))$, and for$k = 3$, one can get$O(1.33^n)$. Algorithms in this area involve simple but interesting applications of dynamic programming ... 8 As a bit of unashamed self-promotion, Marthe Bonamy and I found more negative answers. In particular, Theorem 4 of http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03495 improves upon the aforementioned result of Král' and Sgall in certain cases. The examples we use are complete bipartite graphs, where we used some extremal combinatorics to analyse them. The work was motivated in ... 8 Let$f(G)=1$iff$G$is not$(k-1)$-colorable. Then$f$accepts all$k$-cliques, and rejects all complete$(k-1)$-partite graphs, just like the$k$-clique function does. So, the lower bounds for clique hold also for$f$. 8 There is an inapproximability result for coloring bounded degree graphs in Khot's FOCS'01 paper, "Improved Inapproximability Results for MaxClique, Chromatic Number and Approximate Graph Coloring" — it's probably weaker than you want, but at least it's in the right direction. He proves that, for a parameter$k$(assumed to be constant), and for$k$-... 8 The best known hardness of approximating the chromatic number of$3$-colorable graphs with bounded maximum degree is due to Venkatesan Guruswami and Sanjeev Khanna, On the Hardness of 4-Coloring a 3-Colorable Graph: There is a constant$\Delta$such that given a$3$-colorable graph with maximum degree at most$\Delta$, it is NP-hard to color it using ... 8 Add the edge$(u,v)$. Your property holds if and only if$G$is no longer$k\$-colorable.

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