English

Optimal chromatic bound for ($P_2\cup P_4$, HVN)-free graphs

Combinatorics 2025-11-19 v1

Abstract

The HVN is a graph formed by removing two edges incident to the same vertex from the complete graph K5K_5. In this paper, we prove that every (P2P4P_2\cup P_4, HVN)-free graph GG satisfies χ(G)43ω(G)\chi(G)\leq\lceil\frac{4}{3}\omega(G)\rceil when ω(G)4\omega(G)\ge4, where χ(G)\chi(G) and ω(G)\omega(G) denote the chromatic number and clique number of GG, respectively. Furthermore, this bound is optimal for every ω(G)4\omega(G)\ge4. Constructions demonstrating the optimality of the bound are provided. Our work unifies several previously known results on χ\chi-binding functions for several graph classes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.14507,
  title  = {Optimal chromatic bound for ($P_2\cup P_4$, HVN)-free graphs},
  author = {Lizhong Chen and Hongyang Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.14507},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 2 figures