English

Relatively small counterexamples to Hedetniemi's conjecture

Combinatorics 2020-06-30 v4

Abstract

Hedetniemi conjectured in 1966 that χ(G×H)=min{χ(G),χ(H)}\chi(G \times H) = \min\{\chi(G), \chi(H)\} for all graphs GG and HH. Here G×HG\times H is the graph with vertex set V(G)×V(H) V(G)\times V(H) defined by putting (x,y)(x,y) and (x,y)(x',y') adjacent if and only if xxE(G)xx'\in E(G) and yyE(H)yy'\in E(H). This conjecture received a lot of attention in the past half century. Recently, Shitov refuted this conjecture. Let pp be the minimum number of vertices in a graph of odd girth 77 and fractional chromatic number greater than 3+4/(p1)3+4/(p-1). Shitov's proof shows that Hedetniemi's conjecture fails for some graphs with chromatic number about p22p+1p^22^{p+1} and with about (p22p+1)p32p1(p^22^{p+1})^{p^32^{p-1}} vertices. In this paper, we show that the conjecture fails already for some graphs GG and HH with chromatic number 3p+123\lceil \frac {p+1}2 \rceil and with p(p1)/2p \lceil (p-1)/2 \rceil and 3p+12(p+1)p3 \lceil \frac {p+1}2 \rceil (p+1)-p vertices, respectively. The currently known upper bound for pp is 148148. Thus Hedetniemi's conjecture fails for some graphs GG and HH with chromatic number 225225, and with 10,95210,952 and 33,37733,377 vertices, respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.09028,
  title  = {Relatively small counterexamples to Hedetniemi's conjecture},
  author = {Xuding Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.09028},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

10 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:57:21.921Z