English

Cooperative coloring of matroids

Combinatorics 2023-03-16 v1

Abstract

Let M1,M2,,MkM_1,M_2,\ldots,M_k be a collection of matroids on the same ground set EE. A coloring c:E{1,2,,k}c:E \rightarrow \{1,2,\ldots,k\} is called \emph{cooperative} if for every color jj, the set of elements in color jj is independent in MjM_j. We prove that such coloring always exists provided that every matroid MjM_j is itself kk-colorable (the set EE can be split into at most kk independent sets of MjM_j). We derive this fact from a generalization of Seymour's list coloring theorem for matroids, which asserts that every kk-colorable matroid is kk-list colorable, too. We also point on some consequences for the game-theoretic variants of cooperative coloring of matroids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.08776,
  title  = {Cooperative coloring of matroids},
  author = {Tomasz Bartnicki and Sebastian Czerwiński and Jarosław Grytczuk and Zofia Miechowicz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.08776},
  year   = {2023}
}