English

Complexity dichotomy for List-5-Coloring with a forbidden induced subgraph

Combinatorics 2023-09-06 v3

Abstract

For a positive integer rr and graphs GG and HH, we denote by G+HG+H the disjoint union of GG and HH, and by rHrH the union of rr mutually disjoint copies of HH. Also, we say GG is HH-free if HH is not isomorphic to an induced subgraph of GG. We use PtP_t to denote the path on tt vertices. For a fixed positive integer kk, the List-kk-Coloring Problem is to decide, given a graph GG and a list L(v){1,,k}L(v)\subseteq \{1,\ldots,k\} of colors assigned to each vertex vv of GG, whether GG admits a proper coloring ϕ\phi with ϕ(v)L(v)\phi(v)\in L(v) for every vertex vv of GG, and the kk-Coloring Problem is the List-kk-Coloring Problem restricted to instances with L(v)={1,,k}L(v)=\{1,\ldots, k\} for every vertex vv of GG. We prove that for every positive integer rr, the List-55-Coloring Problem restricted to rP3rP_3-free graphs can be solved in polynomial time. Together with known results, this gives a complete dichotomy for the complexity of the List-55-Coloring Problem restricted to HH-free graphs: For every graph HH, assuming P\neqNP, the List-55-Coloring Problem restricted to HH-free graphs can be solved in polynomial time if and only if HH is an induced subgraph of either rP3rP_3 or P5+rP1P_5+rP_1 for some positive integer rr. As a hardness counterpart, we also show that the kk-Coloring Problem restricted to rP4rP_4-free graphs is NP-complete for all k5k\geq 5 and r2r\geq 2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.01787,
  title  = {Complexity dichotomy for List-5-Coloring with a forbidden induced subgraph},
  author = {Sepehr Hajebi and Yanjia Li and Sophie Spirkl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.01787},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Accepted manuscript, see DOI for journal version

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:47:08.246Z