English

Every subcubic graph is packing $(1,1,2,2,3)$-colorable

Combinatorics 2024-04-16 v1

Abstract

For a sequence S=(s1,,sk)S=(s_1, \ldots, s_k) of non-decreasing integers, a packing SS-coloring of a graph GG is a partition of its vertex set V(G)V(G) into V1,,VkV_1, \ldots, V_k such that for every pair of distinct vertices u,vViu,v \in V_i, where 1ik1 \le i \le k, the distance between uu and vv is at least si+1s_i+1. The packing chromatic number, χp(G)\chi_p(G), of a graph GG is the smallest integer kk such that GG has a packing (1,2,,k)(1,2, \ldots, k)-coloring. Gastineau and Togni asked an open question ``Is it true that the 11-subdivision (D(G)D(G)) of any subcubic graph GG has packing chromatic number at most 55?'' and later Bre\v{s}ar, Klav\v{z}ar, Rall, and Wash conjectured that it is true. In this paper, we prove that every subcubic graph has a packing (1,1,2,2,3)(1,1,2,2,3)-coloring and it is sharp due to the existence of subcubic graphs that are not packing (1,1,2,2)(1,1,2,2)-colorable. As a corollary of our result, χp(D(G))6\chi_p(D(G)) \le 6 for every subcubic graph GG, improving a previous bound (88) due to Balogh, Kostochka, and Liu in 2019, and we are now just one step away from fully solving the conjecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.09337,
  title  = {Every subcubic graph is packing $(1,1,2,2,3)$-colorable},
  author = {Xujun Liu and Xin Zhang and Yanting Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.09337},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

9 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T15:53:52.767Z