Reconfiguration of List Colourings

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Cambie, Stijn, van Batenburg, Wouter Cames, Cranston, Daniel W., Heuvel, Jan van den, Kang, Ross J.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866908362928553984
author Cambie, Stijn
van Batenburg, Wouter Cames
Cranston, Daniel W.
Heuvel, Jan van den
Kang, Ross J.
author_facet Cambie, Stijn
van Batenburg, Wouter Cames
Cranston, Daniel W.
Heuvel, Jan van den
Kang, Ross J.
contents Given a proper (list) colouring of a graph $G$, a recolouring step changes the colour at a single vertex to another colour (in its list) that is currently unused on its neighbours, hence maintaining a proper colouring. Suppose that each vertex $v$ has its own private list $L(v)$ of allowed colours such that $|L(v)|\ge \mbox{deg}(v)+1$. We prove that if $G$ is connected and its maximum degree $Δ$ is at least $3$, then for any two proper $L$-colourings in which at least one vertex can be recoloured, one can be transformed to the other by a sequence of $O(|V(G)|^2)$ recolouring steps. We also show that reducing the list-size of a single vertex $w$ to $\mbox{deg}(w)$ can lead to situations where the space of proper $L$-colourings is `shattered'. Our results can be interpreted as showing a sharp phase transition in the Glauber dynamics of proper $L$-colourings of graphs. This constitutes a `local' strengthening and generalisation of a result of Feghali, Johnson, and Paulusma, which considered the situation where the lists are all identical to $\{1,\ldots,Δ+1\}$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_08020
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reconfiguration of List Colourings
Cambie, Stijn
van Batenburg, Wouter Cames
Cranston, Daniel W.
Heuvel, Jan van den
Kang, Ross J.
Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
Data Structures and Algorithms
Given a proper (list) colouring of a graph $G$, a recolouring step changes the colour at a single vertex to another colour (in its list) that is currently unused on its neighbours, hence maintaining a proper colouring. Suppose that each vertex $v$ has its own private list $L(v)$ of allowed colours such that $|L(v)|\ge \mbox{deg}(v)+1$. We prove that if $G$ is connected and its maximum degree $Δ$ is at least $3$, then for any two proper $L$-colourings in which at least one vertex can be recoloured, one can be transformed to the other by a sequence of $O(|V(G)|^2)$ recolouring steps. We also show that reducing the list-size of a single vertex $w$ to $\mbox{deg}(w)$ can lead to situations where the space of proper $L$-colourings is `shattered'. Our results can be interpreted as showing a sharp phase transition in the Glauber dynamics of proper $L$-colourings of graphs. This constitutes a `local' strengthening and generalisation of a result of Feghali, Johnson, and Paulusma, which considered the situation where the lists are all identical to $\{1,\ldots,Δ+1\}$.
title Reconfiguration of List Colourings
topic Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08020