Related papers: Three-coloring triangle-free graphs on surfaces II…

Let G be a plane graph with exactly one triangle T and all other cycles of length at least 5, and let C be a facial cycle of G of length at most six. We prove that a 3-coloring of C does not extend to a 3-coloring of G if and only if C has…

We show that the size of a 4-critical graph of girth at least five is bounded by a linear function of its genus. This strengthens the previous bound on the size of such graphs given by Thomassen. It also serves as the basic case for the…

Let G be a planar triangle-free graph and let C be a cycle in G of length at most 8. We characterize all situations where a 3-coloring of C does not extend to a proper 3-coloring of the whole graph.

We study 3-coloring properties of triangle-free planar graphs $G$ with two precolored 4-cycles $C_1$ and $C_2$ that are far apart. We prove that either every precoloring of $C_1\cup C_2$ extends to a 3-coloring of $G$, or $G$ contains one…

Given a triangle-free planar graph G and a 9-cycle C in G, we characterize situations where a 3-coloring of C does not extend to a proper 3-coloring of G. This extends previous results when C is a cycle of length at most 8.

Aksenov proved that in a planar graph G with at most one triangle, every precoloring of a 4-cycle can be extended to a 3-coloring of G. We give an exact characterization of planar graphs with two triangles in that some precoloring of a…

Grotzsch proved that every triangle-free planar graph is 3-colorable. Thomassen proved that every planar graph of girth at least five is 3-choosable. As for other surfaces, Thomassen proved that there are only finitely many 4-critical…

Let G be a 4-critical graph with t triangles, embedded in a surface of genus g. Let c be the number of 4-cycles in G that do not bound a 2-cell face. We prove that the sum of lengths of (>=5)-faces of G is at most linear in g+t+c-1.

Dvo\v{r}\'ak, Kr\'al' and Thomas gave a description of the structure of triangle-free graphs on surfaces with respect to 3-coloring. Their description however contains two substructures (both related to graphs embedded in plane with two…

Let $G$ be a plane graph with outer cycle $C$ and let $(L(v):v\in V(G))$ be a family of sets such that $|L(v)|\ge 5$ for every $v\in V(G)$. By an $L$-coloring of a subgraph $J$ of $G$ we mean a (proper) coloring $\phi$ of $J$ such that…

Let G be a graph. It was proved that if G is a planar graph without {4, 6, 7}-cycles and without two 5-cycles sharing exactly one edge, then G 3-colorable. We observed that the proof of this result is not correct.

We settle a problem of Havel by showing that there exists an absolute constant d such that if G is a planar graph in which every two distinct triangles are at distance at least d, then G is 3-colorable. In fact, we prove a more general…

Thomassen proved that every planar graph $G$ on $n$ vertices has at least $2^{n/9}$ distinct $L$-colorings if $L$ is a 5-list-assignment for $G$ and at least $2^{n/10000}$ distinct $L$-colorings if $L$ is a 3-list-assignment for $G$ and $G$…

Let $G$ be a plane graph with outer cycle $C$ and let $(L(v):v\in V(G))$ be a family of non-empty sets. By an $L$-coloring of $G$ we mean a (proper) coloring $\phi$ of $G$ such that $\phi(v)\in L(v)$ for every vertex $v$ of $G$. Thomassen…

We prove a decomposition theorem for the class of triangle-free graphs that do not contain a subdivision of the complete graph on four vertices as an induced subgraph. We prove that every graph of girth at least~5 in this class is…

A graph $G$ is $k$-vertex-critical if $\chi(G)=k$, but $\chi(G')<k$ for every proper induced subgraph $G'$ of $G$. For a family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, $G$ is $\mathcal{F}$-free if no graph $F \in \mathcal{F}$ is an induced subgraph of…

The Gr\"{o}tzsch Theorem states that every triangle-free planar graph admits a proper $3$-coloring. Among many of its generalizations, the one of Gr\"{u}nbaum and Aksenov, giving $3$-colorability of planar graphs with at most three…

Let $H$ be a graph with $\Delta(H) \leq 2$, and let $G$ be obtained from $H$ by gluing in vertex-disjoint copies of $K_4$. We prove that if $H$ contains at most one odd cycle of length exceeding $3$, or if $H$ contains at most $3$…

Two cycles are {\em adjacent} if they have an edge in common. Suppose that $G$ is a planar graph, for any two adjacent cycles $C_{1}$ and $C_{2}$, we have $|C_{1}| + |C_{2}| \geq 11$, in particular, when $|C_{1}| = 5$, $|C_{2}| \geq 7$. We…

The precoloring problem of a graph involves assigning colors to some vertices beforehand, and the objective is to determine whether it can be extended to a proper k-coloring of the entire graph. In 1958, Grotzsch proved that every…