Hoffman colorings of graphs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Abiad, Aida, Bosma, Wieb, van Veluw, Thijs
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Abiad, Aida
Bosma, Wieb
van Veluw, Thijs
author_facet Abiad, Aida
Bosma, Wieb
van Veluw, Thijs
contents Hoffman's bound is a well-known spectral bound on the chromatic number of a graph, known to be tight for instance for bipartite graphs. While Hoffman colorings (colorings attaining the bound) were studied before for regular graphs, for general graphs not much is known. We investigate tightness of the Hoffman bound, with a particular focus on irregular graphs, obtaining several results on the graph structure of Hoffman colorings. In particular, we prove a Decomposition Theorem, which characterizes the structure of Hoffman colorings, and we use it to completely classify Hoffman colorability of cone graphs and line graphs. We also prove a partial converse, the Composition Theorem, leading to an algorithm for computing all connected Hoffman colorable graphs for some given number of vertices and colors. Since several graph coloring parameters are known to be sandwiched between the Hoffman bound and the chromatic number, as a byproduct of our results, we obtain the values of these chromatic parameters.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_02544
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hoffman colorings of graphs
Abiad, Aida
Bosma, Wieb
van Veluw, Thijs
Combinatorics
Hoffman's bound is a well-known spectral bound on the chromatic number of a graph, known to be tight for instance for bipartite graphs. While Hoffman colorings (colorings attaining the bound) were studied before for regular graphs, for general graphs not much is known. We investigate tightness of the Hoffman bound, with a particular focus on irregular graphs, obtaining several results on the graph structure of Hoffman colorings. In particular, we prove a Decomposition Theorem, which characterizes the structure of Hoffman colorings, and we use it to completely classify Hoffman colorability of cone graphs and line graphs. We also prove a partial converse, the Composition Theorem, leading to an algorithm for computing all connected Hoffman colorable graphs for some given number of vertices and colors. Since several graph coloring parameters are known to be sandwiched between the Hoffman bound and the chromatic number, as a byproduct of our results, we obtain the values of these chromatic parameters.
title Hoffman colorings of graphs
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.02544