English

On the largest chromatic number of $F$-free hypergraphs

Combinatorics 2026-04-24 v1

Abstract

Given a hypergraph FF, what is the largest chromatic number that an FF-free hypergraph can have? In the case of graphs, this question is easy to answer: the chromatic number is unbounded if FF contains a cycle, and the largest chromatic number of FF-free graphs is k1k-1 if FF is a forest on kk vertices. The situation is more complicated for hypergraphs. The strong coloring of a hypergraph is a coloring of the vertices such that every hyperedge is rainbow. The weak coloring of a hypergraph is a coloring of the vertices such that no hyperedge is monochromatic. The strong/weak chromatic number of a hypergraph is the minimum number of colors in a strong/weak coloring of the hypergraph. Our question has been completely answered for the weak chromatic number, similarly to the graph case. We characterize the hypergraphs FF such that FF-free hypergraphs have bounded strong chromatic number. The only remaining case is when FF is the 3-uniform expansion Sk+S_k^+ of a star with kk edges. Concerning the strong chromatic number of Sk+S_k^+-free hypergraphs, we give bounds that are asymptitically sharp as kk\rightarrow\infty. We also consider the same problem when the Berge copies of a graph FF are forbidden. We characterize when the strong/weak chromatic numbers are bounded in this case, and obtain sharp results or bounds for specific trees. In particular, when FF is a path, we give a tight bound when r=3r=3 and an asymptotically sharp bound when r=4r=4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.21551,
  title  = {On the largest chromatic number of $F$-free hypergraphs},
  author = {Yichen Wang and Mengyu Duan and Dániel Gerbner and Hilal Hama Karim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.21551},
  year   = {2026}
}