English

Colouring of generalized signed planar graphs

Combinatorics 2019-08-07 v2

Abstract

Assume GG is a graph. We view GG as a symmetric digraph, in which each edge uvuv of GG is replaced by a pair of opposite arcs e=(u,v)e=(u,v) and e1=(v,u)e^{-1}=(v,u). Assume SS is an inverse closed subset of permutations of positive integers. We say GG is SS-kk-colourable if for any mapping σ:E(G)S\sigma: E(G) \to S with σ(x,y)=(σ(y,x))1\sigma (x,y) = (\sigma (y,x))^{-1}, there is a mapping f:V(G)[k]={1,2,,k}f: V(G) \to [k]=\{1,2, \ldots, k\} such that for each arc e=(x,y)e=(x,y), σe(f(x))f(y)\sigma_e(f(x)) \ne f(y). The concept of SS-kk-colouring is a common generalization of many colouring concepts, including kk-colouring, signed kk-colouring defined by M\'{a}\v{c}ajov\'{a}, Raspaud and \v{S}koviera, signed kk-colouring defined by Kang and Steffen, correspondence kk-colouring defined by Dvo\v{r}\'{a}k and Postle, and group colouring defined by Jaeger, Linial, Payan and Tarsi. We are interested in the problem as for which subset SS of S4S_4, every planar graph is SS-colourable. Such a subset SS is called good. The famous four colour theorem is equivalent to say that S={id}S=\{id\} is good. There are two conjectures on signed graph colouring, one is equivalent to S={id,(12)(34)}S=\{id, (12)(34)\} be good and the other is equivalent to S={id,(12)}S=\{id, (12)\} be good. We say two subsets SS and SS' of SkS_k are conjugate if there is a permutation πSk\pi \in S_k such that S={πσπ1:σS}S'= \{\pi \sigma\pi^{-1}: \sigma \in S\}. This paper proves that if SS is a good subset of S4S_4 containing idid, then SS is conjugate to a subset of {id,(12),(34),(12)(34)}\{id, (12), (34), (12)(34)\}. However, it remains an open problem if there is any good subset SS which contains idid and has cardinality S2|S| \ge 2. We also prove that S={(12),(13),(23),(123),(132)}S=\{(12),(13),(23),(123),(132)\} is not good.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.08584,
  title  = {Colouring of generalized signed planar graphs},
  author = {Ligang Jin and Tsai-Lien Wong and Xuding Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.08584},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

8 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T05:23:01.851Z