English

Strengthening Hadwiger's conjecture for $4$- and $5$-chromatic graphs

Combinatorics 2022-09-02 v1

Abstract

Hadwiger's famous coloring conjecture states that every tt-chromatic graph contains a KtK_t-minor. Holroyd [Bull. London Math. Soc. 29, (1997), pp. 139--144] conjectured the following strengthening of Hadwiger's conjecture: If GG is a tt-chromatic graph and SV(G)S \subseteq V(G) takes all colors in every tt-coloring of GG, then GG contains a KtK_t-minor rooted at SS. We prove this conjecture in the first open case of t=4t=4. Notably, our result also directly implies a stronger version of Hadwiger's conjecture for 55-chromatic graphs as follows: Every 55-chromatic graph contains a K5K_5-minor with a singleton branch-set. In fact, in a 55-vertex-critical graph we may specify the singleton branch-set to be any vertex of the graph.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.00594,
  title  = {Strengthening Hadwiger's conjecture for $4$- and $5$-chromatic graphs},
  author = {Anders Martinsson and Raphael Steiner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.00594},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

10 pages, no figures