English

On 3-colourability of $(bull, H)$-free graphs

Combinatorics 2024-04-22 v1

Abstract

The 33-colourability problem is a well-known NP-complete problem and it remains NP-complete for bullbull-free graphs, where bullbull is the graph consisting of K3K_3 with two pendant edges attached to two of its vertices. In this paper we study 33-colourability of (bull,H)(bull,H)-free graphs for several graphs HH. We show that these graphs are 33-colourable or contain an induced odd wheel W2p+1W_{2p+1} for some p2p\geq 2 or a spindle graph M3p+1M_{3p+1} for some p1p\geq 1. Moreover, for all our results we can provide certifying algorithms that run in polynomial time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.12515,
  title  = {On 3-colourability of $(bull, H)$-free graphs},
  author = {Nadzieja Hodur and Monika Pilśniak and Magdalena Prorok and Ingo Schiermeyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.12515},
  year   = {2024}
}