English

Mixing colourings in $2K_2$-free graphs

Combinatorics 2021-08-03 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

The reconfiguration graph for the kk-colourings of a graph GG, denoted Rk(G)R_{k}(G), is the graph whose vertices are the kk-colourings of GG and two colourings are joined by an edge if they differ in colour on exactly one vertex. For any kk-colourable P4P_4-free graph GG, Bonamy and Bousquet proved that Rk+1(G)R_{k+1}(G) is connected. In this short note, we complete the classification of the connectedness of Rk+1(G)R_{k+1}(G) for a kk-colourable graph GG excluding a fixed path, by constructing a 77-chromatic 2K22K_2-free (and hence P5P_5-free) graph admitting a frozen 88-colouring. This settles a question of the second author.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2108.00001,
  title  = {Mixing colourings in $2K_2$-free graphs},
  author = {Carl Feghali and Owen Merkel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.00001},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:42:00.320Z