English

Fractional list packing for layered graphs

Combinatorics 2026-04-13 v2 Discrete Mathematics Probability

Abstract

The fractional list packing number χ(G)\chi_{\ell}^{\bullet}(G) of a graph GG is a graph invariant that has recently arisen from the study of disjoint list-colourings. It measures how large the lists of a list-assignment L:V(G)2NL:V(G)\rightarrow 2^{\mathbb{N}} need to be to ensure the existence of a `perfectly balanced' probability distribution on proper LL-colourings, i.e., such that at every vertex vv, every colour appears with equal probability 1/L(v)1/|L(v)|. In this work we give various bounds on χ(G)\chi_{\ell}^{\bullet}(G), which admit strengthenings for correspondence and local-degree versions. As a corollary, we improve theorems on the related notion of flexible list colouring. In particular we study Cartesian products and dd-degenerate graphs, and we prove that χ(G)\chi_{\ell}^{\bullet}(G) is bounded from above by the pathwidth of GG plus one. The correspondence analogue of the latter is false for treewidth instead of pathwidth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.02695,
  title  = {Fractional list packing for layered graphs},
  author = {Stijn Cambie and Wouter Cames van Batenburg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.02695},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

21 pages; v2 accepted to Journal of Graph Theory

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:07:22.036Z