English

Smaller counterexamples to Hedetniemi's conjecture

Combinatorics 2020-12-29 v1

Abstract

Hedetniemi's conjecture~\cite{hedetniemi1966homomorphisms} for cc-colorings states that the tensor product G×HG \times H is cc-colorable if and only if GG or HH is cc-colorable. El-Zahar and Sauer~\cite{El-ZaharS85} proved it for c=3c = 3. In a recent breakthrough, Shitov~\cite{Shitov19} showed counterexamples, for large cc. While Shitov's proof is already remarkably short, Zhu \cite{Zhu20} simplified the argument and gave a more explicit counterexample for c=125c=125. Tardif \cite{Tardif20} showed that a modification of the arguments allows to use ``wide colorings'' to obtain counterexamples for c=14c=14, and c=13c=13 with a more involved use of lexicographic products. This note presents two more small modifications, resulting in counterexamples for c=5c=5 (with GG and HH having 4686 and 30 vertices, respectively).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.13558,
  title  = {Smaller counterexamples to Hedetniemi's conjecture},
  author = {Marcin Wrochna},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.13558},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T21:24:51.630Z