English

List-3-Coloring ordered graphs with a forbidden induced subgraph

Combinatorics 2024-04-03 v3

Abstract

The List-3-Coloring Problem is to decide, given a graph GG and a list L(v){1,2,3}L(v)\subseteq \{1,2,3\} 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 33-Coloring Problem is the List-33-Coloring Problem on instances with L(v)={1,2,3}L(v)=\{1,2,3\} for every vertex vv of GG. The List-33-Coloring Problem is a classical NP-complete problem, and it is well-known that while restricted to HH-free graphs (meaning graphs with no induced subgraph isomorphic to a fixed graph HH), it remains NP-complete unless HH is isomorphic to an induced subgraph of a path. However, the current state of art is far from proving this to be sufficient for a polynomial time algorithm; in fact, the complexity of the 33-Coloring Problem on P8P_8-free graphs (where P8P_8 denotes the eight-vertex path) is unknown. Here we consider a variant of the List-33-Coloring Problem called the Ordered Graph List-33-Coloring Problem, where the input is an ordered graph, that is, a graph along with a linear order on its vertex set. For ordered graphs GG and HH, we say GG is HH-free if HH is not isomorphic to an induced subgraph of GG with the isomorphism preserving the linear order. We prove, assuming HH to be an ordered graph, a nearly complete dichotomy for the Ordered Graph List-33-Coloring Problem restricted to HH-free ordered graphs. In particular, we show that the problem can be solved in polynomial time if HH has at most one edge, and remains NP-complete if HH has at least three edges. Moreover, in the case where HH has exactly two edges, we give a complete dichotomy when the two edges of HH share an end, and prove several NP-completeness results when the two edges of HH do not share an end, narrowing the open cases down to three very special types of two-edge ordered graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2206.06543,
  title  = {List-3-Coloring ordered graphs with a forbidden induced subgraph},
  author = {Sepehr Hajebi and Yanjia Li and Sophie Spirkl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.06543},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Accepted manuscript; see DOI for journal version

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:50:06.992Z