English

Improper coloring of toroidal graphs

Combinatorics 2025-09-22 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

A graph GG is called (d1,,dk)(d_1,\dots,d_k)-colorable if its vertices can be partitioned into kk sets V1,,VkV_1,\dots,V_k such that Δ(ViG)di,i{1,,k}\Delta(\langle V_i\rangle_G)\leq d_i, i\in \{1,\dots, k\}. If d1==dk=md_1 = \dots = d_k = m we say that GG is kk-colorable with defect mm. A coloring with at least one di,i{1,,k}d_i, i\in \{1,\dots, k\}, greater than 00 is called an improper coloring. It is known that toroidal graphs are properly 77-colorable, therefore they are 77-colorable with defect 00. It was also proved that toroidal graphs are 55-colorable with defect 11 and 33-colorable with defect 22. The question whether they are 44-colorable with defect 11 remains open. In this paper we focus on improper coloring of toroidal graphs with values of defects being not all equal. We prove that these graphs are (0,0,0,0,0,1)(0,0,0,0,0,1^*)-colorable, (0,0,0,0,2)(0,0,0,0,2)-colorable and (0,0,0,1,1)(0,0,0,1^*,1^*)-colorable (a star means that there is an improper coloring in which subgraph induced by the corresponding color class contains at most one edge). Choi and Esperet in [Improper coloring of graphs on surfaces, J. Graph Theory 91(1)(2019),163491(1)\,(2019), 16-34] proved that every graph of Euler genus eg>0eg > 0 is (0,0,0,9eg4)(0, 0, 0, 9eg - 4)-colorable. From this result it follows that toroidal graphs are (0,0,0,14)(0,0,0,14)-colorable. We decreased the value 1414 and proved that toroidal graphs are (0,0,0,4)(0,0,0,4)-colorable. We also show that all 6-regular toroidal graphs except K7K_7 and T11T_{11} are (0,0,0,1)(0,0,0,1)-colorable. Finally, we discuss the colorability of graphs embeddable on N1N_1 and show that they are (0,0,0,2)(0,0,0,2)-colorable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.15870,
  title  = {Improper coloring of toroidal graphs},
  author = {Alexandra Kolačkovská and Mária Maceková and Roman Soták and Diana Švecová},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.15870},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:45:38.116Z