English

No Countable Basis for Borel Directed Graphs of Dichromatic Number at Least Three

Logic 2026-04-08 v1

Abstract

I prove that the Borel directed graphs whose vertex set admits a partition into two Borel acyclic sets form a Σ21\mathbf\Sigma^1_2-complete set; equivalently, that deciding whether a Borel directed graph has Borel dichromatic number at least~33 is a Π21\mathbf\Pi^1_2-complete problem. It follows that no countable family of Borel directed graphs can serve as a basis for this class under Borel homomorphism and, more generally, that any basis must be at least as complex as~Π21\mathbf\Pi^1_2. The proof lifts the classical NP-completeness reduction of Bokal, Fijav\v{z}, Juvan, Kayll, and Mohar to the Borel setting, using the coding framework of Thornton. Combined with a straightforward reduction from undirected to directed coloring problems, this completes the picture for finite Borel chromatic and dichromatic thresholds: for every finite kk, the set of Borel (directed) graphs admitting a Borel kk-(di)coloring is Σ21\mathbf\Sigma^1_2-complete, and in particular admits no countable basis. This contrasts with the uncountable threshold, where a single-element basis exists for Borel chromatic number (Kechris--Solecki--Todor\v{c}evi\'c) and a continuum-size basis exists for Borel dichromatic number (Raghavan--Xiao).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.05228,
  title  = {No Countable Basis for Borel Directed Graphs of Dichromatic Number at Least Three},
  author = {Tonatiuh Matos-Wiederhold},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.05228},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages, 1 figure