English

On minimal nonperfectly divisible fork-free graphs

Combinatorics 2025-04-23 v2

Abstract

A fork is a graph obtained from K1,3K_{1,3} (usually called claw) by subdividing an edge once. A graph is perfectly divisible if for each of its induced subgraph HH, V(H)V(H) can be partitioned into AA and BB such that H[A]H[A] is perfect and ω(H[B])<ω(H)\omega(H[B]) < \omega(H). In this paper, we prove that the perfect divisibility of fork-free graphs is equivalent to that of claw-free graphs. We also prove that, for F{P7,P6K1}F\in \{P_7, P_6\cup K_1\}, each (fork, FF)-free graph GG is perfectly divisible and hence χ(G)(ω(G)+12)\chi(G)\leq \binom{\omega(G)+1}{2}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.14863,
  title  = {On minimal nonperfectly divisible fork-free graphs},
  author = {Baogang Xu and Miaoxia Zhuang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.14863},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:05:10.242Z