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Answers to Two Questions on the DP Color Function

Combinatorics 2020-09-18 v1

Abstract

DP-coloring is a generalization of list coloring that was introduced in 2015 by Dvo\v{r}\'{a}k and Postle. The chromatic polynomial of a graph is a notion that has been extensively studied since the early 20th century. The chromatic polynomial of graph GG is denoted P(G,m)P(G,m), and it is equal to the number of proper mm-colorings of GG. In 2019, Kaul and Mudrock introduced an analogue of the chromatic polynomial for DP-coloring; specifically, the DP color function of graph GG is denoted PDP(G,m)P_{DP}(G,m). Two fundamental questions posed by Kaul and Mudrock are: (1) For any graph GG with nn vertices, is it the case that P(G,m)PDP(G,m)=O(mn3)P(G,m)-P_{DP}(G,m) = O(m^{n-3}) as mm \rightarrow \infty? and (2) For every graph GG, does there exist p,NNp,N \in \mathbb{N} such that PDP(KpG,m)=P(KpG,m)P_{DP}(K_p \vee G, m) = P(K_p \vee G, m) whenever mNm \geq N? We show that the answer to both these questions is yes. In fact, we show the answer to (2) is yes even if we require p=1p=1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.08242,
  title  = {Answers to Two Questions on the DP Color Function},
  author = {Jeffrey A. Mudrock and Seth Thomason},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.08242},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

13 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1904.07697

R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:36:45.977Z