English

Every connected subcubic graph except the Petersen graph is packing $(1,1,2,2)$-colorable

Combinatorics 2026-03-25 v1

Abstract

For a non-decreasing sequence S=(s1,s2,,sk)S = (s_1, s_2, \ldots, s_k) of positive integers, a packing SS-coloring of a graph GG is a partition of V(G)V(G) into V1,V2,,VkV_1, V_2, \ldots, V_k such that each ViV_i has pairwise distance at least si+1s_i+1. The packing chromatic number (PCN) of a graph GG is the minimum kk such that GG has a packing (1,2,,k)(1,2, \ldots, k)-coloring. The 11-subdivision of GG is obtained by replacing each edge of GG with a path of two edges. In 2016, Gastineau and Togni asked an open question whether the 11-subdivision of every subcubic graph has PCN at most 55, and later Bre\v sar, Klav\v zar, Rall, and Wash conjectured it is true. Balogh, Kostochka, and Liu proved the first upper bound of 88, and it was later improved to 66 by Liu, Zhang, and Zhang. In this paper, we prove that every connected subcubic graph except the Petersen graph is packing (1,1,2,2)(1,1,2,2)-colorable. Our result implies a solution to the conjecture of Bre\v sar, Klav\v zar, Rall, and Wash, and answers the question of Gastineau and Togni in the affirmative. Furthermore, our result answers an open question of Kostochka and Liu and solves a conjecture of Liu, Zhang, and Zhang.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.23434,
  title  = {Every connected subcubic graph except the Petersen graph is packing $(1,1,2,2)$-colorable},
  author = {Xinmin Hou and Xujun Liu and Xiangyang Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.23434},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:35:47.608Z