Graph Theory Seminar - Tony Huynh

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 10:30 am - 10:30 am EST (GMT -05:00)

Title: Tree-chromatic number is not equal to path-chromatic number

Speaker: Tony Huynh
Affiliation: University libre de Bruxelles
Room: MC 6486

Abstract: For a graph G and a tree-decomposition (T,B) of G, the chromatic number of (T,B)  is the maximum chromatic number of all bags of (T,B).  The tree-chromatic number of G is the minimum chromatic number of all tree-decompositions (T,B) of G. The path-chromatic number of G is defined analogously. We introduce an operation that always increases the path-chromatic number of a graph.  As an easy corollary of our construction, we obtain an infinite family of graphs whose path-chromatic number and tree-chromatic number are different.  This settles a question of Seymour.  Our results also imply that the path-chromatic numbers of the Mycielski graphs are unbounded.

This is joint work with Ringi Kim (Princeton).