English

3-Colouring Graphs Excluding a Fixed Minor

Combinatorics 2026-07-02 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

We show that, for every fixed graph HH, every nn-vertex graph GG that excludes HH as a minor is 33-colourable with clustering OH(n4/9)O_H(n^{4/9}). That is, there exists a function ff such that for every graph HH, every n1n\ge 1, every nn-vertex graph GG that excludes HH as a minor has a vertex colouring with 33 colours in which each monochromatic component has size at most f(H)n4/9f(H)\cdot n^{4/9}. This generalizes a recent result of Dujmovi\'c, Morin, Norin, and Wood (\textit{arXiv}:2507.03163) from planar graphs to all proper minor-closed graph classes and is the first improvement on clustered 33-colouring of proper minor-closed graph classes since the upper bound of OH(n)O_H(\sqrt{n}) due to Linial, Matou\v{s}ek, Sheffet, and Tardos (\textit{Comb. Prob. Comput.}, \textbf{17}(4):577--589, 2008).

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.02159,
  title  = {3-Colouring Graphs Excluding a Fixed Minor},
  author = {Vida Dujmović and Hussein Houdrouge and Pat Morin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.02159},
  year   = {2026}
}

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19 pages, 0 figures