New Reducible Configurations for Graph Multicoloring with Application to the Experimental Resolution of McDiarmid-Reed's Conjecture
A $(a,b)$-coloring of a graph $G$ associates to each vertex a $b$-subset of a set of $a$ colors in such a way that the color-sets of adjacent vertices are disjoint. We define general handle reduction methods for $(a,b)$-coloring of graphs for $2\le a/b\le 3$. In particular, using necessary and suffi...
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| Published in: | Journal of graph algorithms and applications Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 267 - 288 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
01.10.2025
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| ISSN: | 1526-1719, 1526-1719 |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | A $(a,b)$-coloring of a graph $G$ associates to each vertex a $b$-subset of a set of $a$ colors in such a way that the color-sets of adjacent vertices are disjoint. We define general handle reduction methods for $(a,b)$-coloring of graphs for $2\le a/b\le 3$. In particular, using necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an $(a,b)$-coloring of a path with prescribed color-sets on its end-vertices, more complex $(a,b)$-colorability reduction handles are presented. The utility of these tools is exemplified on finite triangle-free induced subgraphs of the triangular lattice for which McDiarmid-Reed's conjecture asserts that they are all $(9,4)$-colorable. Computations on millions of such graphs generated randomly show that our tools allow to find a $(9,4)$-coloring for each of them except for one specific regular shape of graphs (that can be $(9,4)$-colored by an easy ad-hoc process). We thus obtain computational evidence towards the conjecture of McDiarmid&Reed. |
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| ISSN: | 1526-1719 1526-1719 |
| DOI: | 10.7155/jgaa.v29i1.3096 |