English

Partial list colouring of certain graphs

Combinatorics 2014-03-12 v1

Abstract

Let GG be a graph on nn vertices and let Lk\mathcal{L}_k be an arbitrary function that assigns each vertex in GG a list of kk colours. Then GG is Lk\mathcal{L}_k-list colourable if there exists a proper colouring of the vertices of GG such that every vertex is coloured with a colour from its own list. We say GG is kk-choosable if for every such function Lk\mathcal{L}_k, GG is Lk\mathcal{L}_k-list colourable. The minimum kk such that GG is kk-choosable is called the list chromatic number of GG and is denoted by χL(G)\chi_L(G). Let χL(G)=s\chi_L(G) = s and let tt be a positive integer less than ss. The partial list colouring conjecture due to Albertson et al. \cite{albertson2000partial} states that for every Lt\mathcal{L}_t that maps the vertices of GG to tt-sized lists, there always exists an induced subgraph of GG of size at least tns\frac{tn}{s} that is Lt\mathcal{L}_t-list colourable. In this paper we show that the partial list colouring conjecture holds true for certain classes of graphs like claw-free graphs, graphs with large chromatic number, chordless graphs, and series-parallel graphs. In the second part of the paper, we put forth a question which is a variant of the partial list colouring conjecture: does GG always contain an induced subgraph of size at least tns\frac{tn}{s} that is tt-choosable? We show that the answer to this question is not always `yes' by explicitly constructing an infinite family of 33-choosable graphs where a largest induced 22-choosable subgraph of each graph in the family is of size at most 5n8\frac{5n}{8}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.2587,
  title  = {Partial list colouring of certain graphs},
  author = {Jeannette Janssen and Rogers Mathew and Deepak Rajendraprasad},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.2587},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

9 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T03:24:19.612Z