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Recoloring graphs of treewidth 2

Discrete Mathematics 2020-12-22 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

Two (proper) colorings of a graph are adjacent if they differ on exactly one vertex. Jerrum proved that any (d+2)(d + 2)-coloring of any d-degenerate graph can be transformed into any other via a sequence of adjacent colorings. A result of Bonamy et al. ensures that a shortest transformation can have a quadratic length even for d=1d = 1. Bousquet and Perarnau proved that a linear transformation exists for between (2d+2)(2d + 2)-colorings. It is open to determine if this bound can be reduced. In this note, we prove that it can be reduced for graphs of treewidth 2, which are 2-degenerate. There exists a linear transformation between 5-colorings. It completes the picture for graphs of treewidth 2 since there exist graphs of treewidth 2 such a linear transformation between 4-colorings does not exist.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.11459,
  title  = {Recoloring graphs of treewidth 2},
  author = {Valentin Bartier and Nicolas Bousquet and Marc Heinrich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.11459},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T21:08:41.317Z