English

Tree-chromatic number is not equal to path-chromatic number

Combinatorics 2016-12-22 v3

Abstract

For a graph GG and a tree-decomposition (T,B)(T, \mathcal{B}) of GG, the chromatic number of (T,B)(T, \mathcal{B}) is the maximum of χ(G[B])\chi(G[B]), taken over all bags BBB \in \mathcal{B}. The tree-chromatic number of GG is the minimum chromatic number of all tree-decompositions (T,B)(T, \mathcal{B}) of GG. The path-chromatic number of GG is defined analogously. In this paper, we introduce an operation that always increases the path-chromatic number of a graph. As an easy corollary of our construction, we obtain an infinite family of graphs whose path-chromatic number and tree-chromatic number are different. This settles a question of Seymour. Our results also imply that the path-chromatic numbers of the Mycielski graphs are unbounded.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1505.06234,
  title  = {Tree-chromatic number is not equal to path-chromatic number},
  author = {Tony Huynh and Ringi Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.06234},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

11 pages, 0 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:39:51.649Z