Majority Colorings of Sparse Digraphs

A majority coloring of a directed graph is a vertex-coloring in which every vertex has the same color as at most half of its out-neighbors. Kreutzer, Oum, Seymour, van der Zypen and Wood proved that every digraph has a majority $4$-coloring and conjectured that every digraph admits a majority $3$-coloring. They observed that the Local Lemma implies the conjecture for digraphs of large enough minimum out-degree if, crucially, the maximum in-degree is bounded by a(n exponential) function of the minimum out-degree. Our goal in this paper is to develop alternative methods that allow the verification of the conjecture for natural, broad digraph classes, without any restriction on the in-degrees. Among others, we prove the conjecture 1) for digraphs with chromatic number at most $6$ or dichromatic number at most $3$, and thus for all planar digraphs; and 2) for digraphs with maximum out-degree at most $4$. The benchmark case of $r$-regular digraphs remains open for $r \in [5,143]$. Our inductive proofs depend on loaded inductive statements about precoloring extensions of list-colorings. This approach also gives rise to stronger conclusions, involving the choosability version of majority coloring. We also give further evidence towards the existence of majority-$3$-colorings by showing that every digraph has a fractional majority 3.9602-coloring. Moreover we show that every digraph with large enough minimum out-degree has a fractional majority $(2+\varepsilon)$-coloring.

Nonrepetitive List Colorings of the Integers

A coloring of the integers is nonrepetitive if no two adjacent intervals have the same color sequence. A beautiful theorem of Thue asserts that there exists a nonrepetitive coloring of $${\mathbb {N}}$$ N using only three colors. We obtain some generalizations of this result in which the adjacency of intervals is specified by more general graphs. We focus on the list variant of the problem, in which every integer gets a color from its own set of colors. For instance, we prove that there exists a coloring of $${\mathbb {N}}$$ N from arbitrary lists of size 8, such that the following property holds for every $$n\ge 1$$ n ≥ 1 : among any $$2^n$$ 2 n consecutively adjacent intervals, each of length n, no two have the same color sequence. Another result is related to the possible extension of the famous Dejean’s conjecture to the list setting. It asserts that for every $$k\ge 1$$ k ≥ 1 , there is a coloring of $${\mathbb {N}}$$ N from lists of size $$k+2\sqrt{k}$$ k + 2 k , such that no two among any k consecutively adjacent intervals have the same color sequence.

A Note on Not-4-List Colorable Planar Graphs

The Four Color Theorem states that every planar graph is properly 4-colorable. Moreover, it is well known that there are planar graphs that are non-$4$-list colorable. In this paper we investigate a problem combining proper colorings and list colorings. We ask whether the vertex set of every planar graph can be partitioned into two subsets where one subset induces a bipartite graph and the other subset induces a $2$-list colorable graph. We answer this question in the negative strengthening the result on non-$4$-list colorable planar graphs.

On $t$-Common List-Colorings

In this paper, we introduce a new variation of list-colorings. For a graph $G$ and for a given nonnegative integer $t$, a $t$-common list assignment of $G$ is a mapping $L$ which assigns each vertex $v$ a set $L(v)$ of colors such that given set of $t$ colors belong to $L(v)$ for every $v\in V(G)$. The $t$-common list chromatic number of $G$ denoted by $ch_t(G)$ is defined as the minimum positive integer $k$ such that there exists an $L$-coloring of $G$ for every $t$-common list assignment $L$ of $G$, satisfying $|L(v)| \ge k$ for every vertex $v\in V(G)$. We show that for all positive integers $k, \ell$ with $2 \le k \le \ell$ and for any positive integers $i_1 , i_2, \ldots, i_{k-2}$ with $k \le i_{k-2} \le \cdots \le i_1 \le \ell$, there exists a graph $G$ such that $\chi(G)= k$, $ch(G) = \ell$ and $ch_t(G) = i_t$ for every $t=1, \ldots, k-2$. Moreover, we consider the $t$-common list chromatic number of planar graphs. From the four color theorem and the result of Thomassen (1994), for any $t=1$ or $2$, the sharp upper bound of $t$-common list chromatic number of planar graphs is $4$ or $5$. Our first step on $t$-common list chromatic number of planar graphs is to find such a sharp upper bound. By constructing a planar graph $G$ such that $ch_1(G) =5$, we show that the sharp upper bound for $1$-common list chromatic number of planar graphs is $5$. The sharp upper bound of $2$-common list chromatic number of planar graphs is still open. We also suggest several questions related to $t$-common list chromatic number of planar graphs.