Chapter 8 Graph colouring Sophia Inria（第八章图着色Inria索菲亚）.pdf

Chapter 8 Graph colouring 8.1 Vertex colouring A (vertex) colouring of a graph G is a mapping c : V (G) → S. The elements of S are called colours; the vertices of one colour form a colour class. If |S | = k, we say that c is a k-colouring (often we use S = {1,...,k}). A colouring is proper if adjacent vertices have different colours. A graph is k-colourable if it has a proper k-colouring. The chromatic number χ (G) is the least k such that G is k-colourable. Obviously, χ (G) exists as assigning distinct colours to vertices yields a proper |V (G)|-colouring. An optimal colouring of G is a χ (G)-colouring. A graph G is k-chromatic if χ (G) = k. In a proper colouring, each colour class is a stable set. Hence a k-colouring may also be seen as a partition of the vertex set of G into k disjoint stable sets Si = {v | c(v) = i} for 1 ≤ i ≤ k. Therefore k-colourable are also called k-partite graphs. Moreover, 2-colourable graphs are very often called bipartite. Clearly, if H is a subgraph of G then any proper colouring of G is a proper colouring of H . Proposition 8.1. If H is a subgraph of G, then χ (H ) ≤ χ (G). Proposition 8.2. χ (G) = max{χ (C),C connected component of G}. Proof. Proposition 8.1 gives the inequality χ (G) ≥ max{χ (C),C connected component of G} because every connected component of G is a subgraph of G. Let us now prove the opposite inequality. Let C ,C ,...,Cp be the connected components of 1 2 G. For 1 ≤ i ≤ p , let c be a proper colouring of C with colours 1,2,...,χ (C ). Let c be the union i i i of the c that is the colouring of G defined by c(v) = c (v) for all v ∈ C . Since there is no edge be- i i i tween two vertices in different connected c