Graph coloring

A proper vertex coloring of the Petersen graph

with 3 colors, the minimum number possible.

In graph theory, graph coloring is a

special case of graph labeling; it is an
assignment of labels traditionally
called "colors" to elements of a graph
subject to certain constraints. In its
simplest form, it is a way of coloring
the vertices of a graph such that no
two adjacent vertices are of the same
color; this is called a vertex coloring.
Similarly, an edge coloring assigns a
color to each edge so that no two
adjacent edges are of the same color,
and a face coloring of a planar graph
assigns a color to each face or region
so that no two faces that share a
boundary have the same color.

Vertex coloring is the starting point of

graph coloring. Other coloring
problems can be transformed into a
vertex version. For example, an edge
coloring of a graph is just a vertex
coloring of its line graph, and a face
coloring of a plane graph is just a
vertex coloring of its dual. However,
non-vertex coloring problems are
often stated and studied as is. That is
partly for perspective, and partly
because some problems are best
studied in non-vertex form, as for
instance is edge coloring.

The convention of using colors

originates from coloring the countries
of a map, where each face is literally
colored. This was generalized to
coloring the faces of a graph
embedded in the plane. By planar
duality it became coloring the
vertices, and in this form it
generalizes to all graphs. In
mathematical and computer
representations, it is typical to use the
first few positive or nonnegative
integers as the "colors". In general,
one can use any finite set as the
"color set". The nature of the coloring
problem depends on the number of
colors but not on what they are.

Graph coloring enjoys many practical

applications as well as theoretical
challenges. Beside the classical types
of problems, different limitations can
also be set on the graph, or on the
way a color is assigned, or even on
the color itself. It has even reached
popularity with the general public in
the form of the popular number
puzzle Sudoku. Graph coloring is still
a very active field of research.

Note: Many terms used in this article

are defined in Glossary of graph
theory.

History
The first results about graph coloring
deal almost exclusively with planar
graphs in the form of the coloring of
maps. While trying to color a map of
the counties of England, Francis
Guthrie postulated the four color
conjecture, noting that four colors
were sufficient to color the map so
that no regions sharing a common
border received the same color.
Guthrie’s brother passed on the
question to his mathematics teacher
Augustus de Morgan at University
College, who mentioned it in a letter to
William Hamilton in 1852. Arthur
Cayley raised the problem at a
meeting of the London Mathematical
Society in 1879. The same year, Alfred
Kempe published a paper that
claimed to establish the result, and for
a decade the four color problem was
considered solved. For his
accomplishment Kempe was elected
a Fellow of the Royal Society and later
President of the London
Mathematical Society.[1]

In 1890, Heawood pointed out that

Kempe’s argument was wrong.
However, in that paper he proved the
five color theorem, saying that every
planar map can be colored with no
more than five colors, using ideas of
Kempe. In the following century, a
vast amount of work and theories
were developed to reduce the number
of colors to four, until the four color
theorem was finally proved in 1976 by
Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken.
The proof went back to the ideas of
Heawood and Kempe and largely
disregarded the intervening
developments.[2] The proof of the four
color theorem is also noteworthy for
being the first major computer-aided
proof.

In 1912, George David Birkhoff

introduced the chromatic polynomial
to study the coloring problems, which
was generalised to the Tutte
polynomial by Tutte, important
structures in algebraic graph theory.
Kempe had already drawn attention to
the general, non-planar case in
1879,[3] and many results on
generalisations of planar graph
coloring to surfaces of higher order
followed in the early 20th century.

In 1960, Claude Berge formulated

another conjecture about graph
coloring, the strong perfect graph
conjecture, originally motivated by an
information-theoretic concept called
the zero-error capacity of a graph
introduced by Shannon. The
conjecture remained unresolved for
40 years, until it was established as
the celebrated strong perfect graph
theorem by Chudnovsky, Robertson,
Seymour, and Thomas in 2002.

Graph coloring has been studied as

an algorithmic problem since the early
1970s: the chromatic number
problem is one of Karp’s 21 NP-
complete problems from 1972, and at
approximately the same time various
exponential-time algorithms were
developed based on backtracking and
on the deletion-contraction recurrence
of Zykov (1949). One of the major
applications of graph coloring,
register allocation in compilers, was
introduced in 1981.

Definition and
terminology

This graph can be 3-colored in 12 different

ways.
Vertex coloring

When used without any qualification,

a coloring of a graph is almost always
a proper vertex coloring, namely a
labeling of the graph’s vertices with
colors such that no two vertices
sharing the same edge have the same
color. Since a vertex with a loop (i.e. a
connection directly back to itself)
could never be properly colored, it is
understood that graphs in this context
are loopless.

The terminology of using colors for

vertex labels goes back to map
coloring. Labels like red and blue are
only used when the number of colors
is small, and normally it is understood
that the labels are drawn from the
integers {1, 2, 3, ...}.

A coloring using at most k colors is

called a (proper) k-coloring. The
smallest number of colors needed to
color a graph G is called its chromatic
number, and is often denoted χ(G).
Sometimes γ(G) is used, since χ(G) is
also used to denote the Euler
characteristic of a graph. A graph that
can be assigned a (proper) k-coloring
is k-colorable, and it is k-chromatic if
its chromatic number is exactly k. A
subset of vertices assigned to the
same color is called a color class,
every such class forms an
independent set. Thus, a k-coloring is
the same as a partition of the vertex
set into k independent sets, and the
terms k-partite and k-colorable have
the same meaning.

Chromatic polynomial
 

All non-isomorphic graphs on 3 vertices and

their chromatic polynomials. The empty graph
E3 (red) admits a 1-coloring, the others admit no
such colorings. The green graph admits 12

colorings with 3 colors.

The chromatic polynomial counts the

number of ways a graph can be
colored using no more than a given
number of colors. For example, using
three colors, the graph in the adjacent
image can be colored in 12 ways.
With only two colors, it cannot be
colored at all. With four colors, it can
be colored in 24 + 4⋅12 = 72 ways:
using all four colors, there are 4! = 24
valid colorings (every assignment of
four colors to any 4-vertex graph is a
proper coloring); and for every choice
of three of the four colors, there are
12 valid 3-colorings. So, for the graph
in the example, a table of the number
of valid colorings would start like this:
Available colors 1 2 3 4 …

Number of colorings 0 0 12 72 …

The chromatic polynomial is a

function P(G, t) that counts the
number of t-colorings of G. As the
name indicates, for a given G the
function is indeed a polynomial in t.
For the example graph,
P(G, t) = t(t − 1)2(t − 2), and
indeed P(G, 4) = 72.

The chromatic polynomial includes at

least as much information about the
colorability of G as does the
chromatic number. Indeed, χ is the
smallest positive integer that is not a
root of the chromatic polynomial
  
Chromatic polynomials for certain graphs
Triangle
 
K3

Complete
 
graph Kn

Tree with
 
n vertices

Cycle Cn  

Petersen
 
graph

Edge coloring

An edge coloring of a graph is a

proper coloring of the edges, meaning
an assignment of colors to edges so
that no vertex is incident to two edges
of the same color. An edge coloring
with k colors is called a k-edge-
coloring and is equivalent to the
problem of partitioning the edge set
into k matchings. The smallest
number of colors needed for an edge
coloring of a graph G is the chromatic
index, or edge chromatic number, χ′
(G). A Tait coloring is a 3-edge
coloring of a cubic graph. The four
color theorem is equivalent to the
assertion that every planar cubic
bridgeless graph admits a Tait
coloring.

Total coloring

Total coloring is a type of coloring on

the vertices and edges of a graph.
When used without any qualification,
a total coloring is always assumed to
be proper in the sense that no
adjacent vertices, no adjacent edges,
and no edge and its end-vertices are
assigned the same color. The total
chromatic number χ″(G) of a graph G
is the fewest colors needed in any
total coloring of G.

Unlabeled coloring

An unlabeled coloring of a graph is an

orbit of a coloring under the action of
the automorphism group of the graph.
If we interpret a coloring of a graph on
  vertices as a vector in   , the
action of an automorphism is a
permutation of the coefficients of the
coloring. There are analogues of the
chromatic polynomials which count
the number of unlabeled colorings of
a graph from a given finite color set.

Properties
Bounds on the chromatic
number

Assigning distinct colors to distinct

vertices always yields a proper
coloring, so
  

The only graphs that can be 1-colored

are edgeless graphs. A complete
graph   of n vertices requires
  colors. In an optimal
coloring there must be at least one of
the graph’s m edges between every
pair of color classes, so

If G contains a clique of size k, then at

least k colors are needed to color that
clique; in other words, the chromatic
number is at least the clique number:

 
For perfect graphs this bound is tight.
Finding cliques is known as clique
problem.

The 2-colorable graphs are exactly the

bipartite graphs, including trees and
forests. By the four color theorem,
every planar graph can be 4-colored.

A greedy coloring shows that every

graph can be colored with one more
color than the maximum vertex
degree,

Complete graphs have  

and   , and odd cycles
have   and   , so
for these graphs this bound is best
possible. In all other cases, the bound
can be slightly improved; Brooks’
theorem[4] states that

Brooks’ theorem:  
for a connected, simple graph G,
unless G is a complete graph or an
odd cycle.

Lower bounds on the

chromatic number

Several lower bounds for the

chromatic bounds have been
discovered over the years:
Hoffman's bound: Let   be a real
symmetric matrix such that  
whenever   is not an edge in   .
Define   ,

where   are the

largest and smallest eigenvalues of
  . Define   ,

with   as above. Then:

  .

Vector chromatic number: Let   be

a positive semi-definite matrix such
that   whenever   is
an edge in   . Define   to be
the least k for which such a matrix  
exists. Then

  .

Lovász number: The Lovász number

of a complementary graph, is also a
lower bound on the chromatic
number:

  .

Fractional chromatic number: The

Fractional chromatic number of a
graph, is a lower bound on the
chromatic number as well:

  .

These bounds are ordered as follows:

  
.

Graphs with high

chromatic number

Graphs with large cliques have a high

chromatic number, but the opposite is
not true. The Grötzsch graph is an
example of a 4-chromatic graph
without a triangle, and the example
can be generalised to the
Mycielskians.

Mycielski’s Theorem (Alexander

Zykov 1949, Jan Mycielski 1955):
There exist triangle-free graphs with
 arbitrarily high chromatic number.

From Brooks’s theorem, graphs with

high chromatic number must have
high maximum degree. Another local
property that leads to high chromatic
number is the presence of a large
clique. But colorability is not an
entirely local phenomenon: A graph
with high girth looks locally like a tree,
because all cycles are long, but its
chromatic number need not be 2:

Theorem (Erdős): There exist

graphs of arbitrarily high girth and
chromatic number[5].

Bounds on the chromatic

index

An edge coloring of G is a vertex

coloring of its line graph   , and
vice versa. Thus,

There is a strong relationship between

edge colorability and the graph’s
maximum degree   . Since all
edges incident to the same vertex
need their own color, we have

Moreover,
 Kőnig’s theorem:  
if G is bipartite.

In general, the relationship is even

stronger than what Brooks’s theorem
gives for vertex coloring:

Vizing’s Theorem: A graph of

maximal degree   has edge-
chromatic number   or   .

Other properties

A graph has a k-coloring if and only if

it has an acyclic orientation for which
the longest path has length at most k;
this is the Gallai–Hasse–Roy–Vitaver
theorem (Nešetřil & Ossona de
Mendez 2012).

For planar graphs, vertex colorings

are essentially dual to nowhere-zero
flows.

About infinite graphs, much less is

known. The following are two of the
few results about infinite graph
coloring:

If all finite subgraphs of an infinite

graph G are k-colorable, then so is
G, under the assumption of the
axiom of choice. This is the de
Bruijn–Erdős theorem of de Bruijn &
Erdős (1951).
 If a graph admits a full n-coloring
for every n ≥ n0, it admits an infinite
full coloring (Fawcett 1978).

Open problems

As stated above,
  A
conjecture of Reed from 1998 is that
the value is essentially closer to the
lower bound,
 

The chromatic number of the plane,

where two points are adjacent if they
have unit distance, is unknown,
although it is one of 5, 6, or 7. Other
open problems concerning the
chromatic number of graphs include
the Hadwiger conjecture stating that
every graph with chromatic number k
has a complete graph on k vertices as
a minor, the Erdős–Faber–Lovász
conjecture bounding the chromatic
number of unions of complete graphs
that have at exactly one vertex in
common to each pair, and the
Albertson conjecture that among k-
chromatic graphs the complete
graphs are the ones with smallest
crossing number.
When Birkhoff and Lewis introduced
the chromatic polynomial in their
attack on the four-color theorem, they
conjectured that for planar graphs G,
the polynomial   has no zeros
in the region   . Although it is
known that such a chromatic
polynomial has no zeros in the region
  and that   , their
conjecture is still unresolved. It also
remains an unsolved problem to
characterize graphs which have the
same chromatic polynomial and to
determine which polynomials are
chromatic.
Algorithms
 Graph coloring
 

Decision

Name Graph coloring,

vertex coloring, k-
coloring

Input Graph G with n

vertices. Integer k

Output Does G admit a

proper vertex
coloring with k
colors?

Running time O(2 nn)[6]

Complexity NP-complete
Reduction from 3-Satisfiability
Garey–Johnson GT4

Optimisation

Name Chromatic number

Input Graph G with n

vertices.

Output χ(G)

Complexity NP-hard

Approximability O(n (log n)−3(log log

n)2)

Inapproximability O(n1−ε) unless

P = NP

Counting problem

Name Chromatic
polynomial

Input Graph G with n

 vertices. Integer k
Output The number P (G,k)
of proper k-colorings
of G

Running time O(2 nn)

Complexity #P-complete

Approximability FPRAS for restricted

cases

Inapproximability No PTAS unless

P = NP

Polynomial time

Determining if a graph can be colored

with 2 colors is equivalent to
determining whether or not the graph
is bipartite, and thus computable in
linear time using breadth-first search
or depth-first search. More generally,
the chromatic number and a
corresponding coloring of perfect
graphs can be computed in
polynomial time using semidefinite
programming. Closed formulas for
chromatic polynomial are known for
many classes of graphs, such as
forests, chordal graphs, cycles,
wheels, and ladders, so these can be
evaluated in polynomial time.

If the graph is planar and has low

branch-width (or is nonplanar but with
a known branch decomposition), then
it can be solved in polynomial time
using dynamic programming. In
general, the time required is
polynomial in the graph size, but
exponential in the branch-width.

Exact algorithms

Brute-force search for a k-coloring

considers each of the  
assignments of k colors to n vertices
and checks for each if it is legal. To
compute the chromatic number and
the chromatic polynomial, this
procedure is used for every
  , impractical for all
but the smallest input graphs.

Using dynamic programming and a

bound on the number of maximal
independent sets, k-colorability can be
decided in time and space
  .[7] Using the principle of
inclusion–exclusion and Yates’s
algorithm for the fast zeta transform,
k-colorability can be decided in time
  [6] for any k. Faster
algorithms are known for 3- and 4-
colorability, which can be decided in
time   [8] and
  ,[9] respectively.
Contraction

The contraction   of a graph G is

the graph obtained by identifying the
vertices u and v, and removing any
edges between them. The remaining
edges originally incident to u or v are
now incident to their identification.
This operation plays a major role in
the analysis of graph coloring.

The chromatic number satisfies the

recurrence relation:

due to Zykov (1949), where u and v

are non-adjacent vertices, and
  is the graph with the edge uv
added. Several algorithms are based
on evaluating this recurrence and the
resulting computation tree is
sometimes called a Zykov tree. The
running time is based on a heuristic
for choosing the vertices u and v.

The chromatic polynomial satisfies

the following recurrence relation

where u and v are adjacent vertices,

and   is the graph with the
edge uv removed.  
represents the number of possible
proper colorings of the graph, where
the vertices may have the same or
different colors. Then the proper
colorings arise from two different
graphs. To explain, if the vertices u
and v have different colors, then we
might as well consider a graph where
u and v are adjacent. If u and v have
the same colors, we might as well
consider a graph where u and v are
contracted. Tutte’s curiosity about
which other graph properties satisfied
this recurrence led him to discover a
bivariate generalization of the
chromatic polynomial, the Tutte
polynomial.
These expressions give rise to a
recursive procedure called the
deletion–contraction algorithm, which
forms the basis of many algorithms
for graph coloring. The running time
satisfies the same recurrence relation
as the Fibonacci numbers, so in the
worst case the algorithm runs in time
within a polynomial factor of
  for

n vertices and m edges.[10] The

analysis can be improved to within a
polynomial factor of the number  
of spanning trees of the input
graph.[11] In practice, branch and
bound strategies and graph
isomorphism rejection are employed
to avoid some recursive calls. The
running time depends on the heuristic
used to pick the vertex pair.

Greedy coloring

Two greedy colorings of the same graph using

different vertex orders. The right example
generalizes to 2-colorable graphs with n
vertices, where the greedy algorithm expends
  colors.
The greedy algorithm considers the
vertices in a specific order   ,…, 
and assigns to   the smallest
available color not used by   ’s
neighbours among   ,…,  , adding
a fresh color if needed. The quality of
the resulting coloring depends on the
chosen ordering. There exists an
ordering that leads to a greedy
coloring with the optimal number of
  colors. On the other hand,
greedy colorings can be arbitrarily
bad; for example, the crown graph on
n vertices can be 2-colored, but has
an ordering that leads to a greedy
coloring with   colors.
For chordal graphs, and for special
cases of chordal graphs such as
interval graphs and indifference
graphs, the greedy coloring algorithm
can be used to find optimal colorings
in polynomial time, by choosing the
vertex ordering to be the reverse of a
perfect elimination ordering for the
graph. The perfectly orderable graphs
generalize this property, but it is NP-
hard to find a perfect ordering of
these graphs.

If the vertices are ordered according

to their degrees, the resulting greedy
coloring uses at most
  colors, at
most one more than the graph’s
maximum degree. This heuristic is
sometimes called the Welsh–Powell
algorithm.[12] Another heuristic due to
Brélaz establishes the ordering
dynamically while the algorithm
proceeds, choosing next the vertex
adjacent to the largest number of
different colors.[13] Many other graph
coloring heuristics are similarly based
on greedy coloring for a specific static
or dynamic strategy of ordering the
vertices, these algorithms are
sometimes called sequential coloring
algorithms.
The maximum (worst) number of
colors that can be obtained by the
greedy algorithm, by using a vertex
ordering chosen to maximize this
number, is called the Grundy number
of a graph.

Parallel and distributed

algorithms

In the field of distributed algorithms,

graph coloring is closely related to the
problem of symmetry breaking. The
current state-of-the-art randomized
algorithms are faster for sufficiently
large maximum degree ∆ than
deterministic algorithms. The fastest
randomized algorithms employ the
multi-trials technique by Schneider et
al.[14]

In a symmetric graph, a deterministic

distributed algorithm cannot find a
proper vertex coloring. Some auxiliary
information is needed in order to
break symmetry. A standard
assumption is that initially each node
has a unique identifier, for example,
from the set {1, 2, ..., n}. Put otherwise,
we assume that we are given an n-
coloring. The challenge is to reduce
the number of colors from n to, e.g.,
∆ + 1. The more colors are employed,
e.g. O(∆) instead of ∆ + 1, the fewer
communication rounds are
required.[14]

A straightforward distributed version

of the greedy algorithm for (∆ + 1)-
coloring requires Θ(n) communication
rounds in the worst case −
information may need to be
propagated from one side of the
network to another side.

The simplest interesting case is an n-

cycle. Richard Cole and Uzi Vishkin[15]
show that there is a distributed
algorithm that reduces the number of
colors from n to O(log n) in one
synchronous communication step. By
iterating the same procedure, it is
possible to obtain a 3-coloring of an
n-cycle in O(log* n) communication
steps (assuming that we have unique
node identifiers).

The function log*, iterated logarithm,

is an extremely slowly growing
function, "almost constant". Hence
the result by Cole and Vishkin raised
the question of whether there is a
constant-time distributed algorithm
for 3-coloring an n-cycle. Linial (1992)
showed that this is not possible: any
deterministic distributed algorithm
requires Ω(log* n) communication
steps to reduce an n-coloring to a 3-
coloring in an n-cycle.

The technique by Cole and Vishkin

can be applied in arbitrary bounded-
degree graphs as well; the running
time is poly(∆) + O(log* n).[16] The
technique was extended to unit disk
graphs by Schneider et al.[17] The
fastest deterministic algorithms for
(∆ + 1)-coloring for small ∆ are due to
Leonid Barenboim, Michael Elkin and
Fabian Kuhn.[18] The algorithm by
Barenboim et al. runs in time
O(∆) + log*(n)/2, which is optimal in
terms of n since the constant factor
1/2 cannot be improved due to Linial's
lower bound. Panconesi & Srinivasan
(1996) use network decompositions
to compute a ∆+1 coloring in time
  .

The problem of edge coloring has

also been studied in the distributed
model. Panconesi & Rizzi (2001)
achieve a (2∆ − 1)-coloring in
O(∆ + log* n) time in this model. The
lower bound for distributed vertex
coloring due to Linial (1992) applies
to the distributed edge coloring
problem as well.

Decentralized algorithms

Decentralized algorithms are ones

where no message passing is allowed
(in contrast to distributed algorithms
where local message passing takes
places), and efficient decentralized
algorithms exist that will color a graph
if a proper coloring exists. These
assume that a vertex is able to sense
whether any of its neighbors are using
the same color as the vertex i.e.,
whether a local conflict exists. This is
a mild assumption in many
applications e.g. in wireless channel
allocation it is usually reasonable to
assume that a station will be able to
detect whether other interfering
transmitters are using the same
channel (e.g. by measuring the SINR).
This sensing information is sufficient
to allow algorithms based on learning
automata to find a proper graph
coloring with probability one.[19]

Computational complexity

Graph coloring is computationally

hard. It is NP-complete to decide if a
given graph admits a k-coloring for a
given k except for the cases k ∈
{0,1,2} . In particular, it is NP-hard to
compute the chromatic number.[20]
The 3-coloring problem remains NP-
complete even on 4-regular planar
graphs.[21] However, for every k > 3, a
k-coloring of a planar graph exists by
the four color theorem, and it is
possible to find such a coloring in
polynomial time.

The best known approximation

algorithm computes a coloring of size
at most within a factor
O(n(log log n)2(log n)−3) of the
chromatic number.[22] For all ε > 0,
approximating the chromatic number
within n1−ε is NP-hard.[23]

It is also NP-hard to color a 3-

colorable graph with 4 colors[24] and a
k-colorable graph with k(log k ) / 25
colors for sufficiently large constant
k.[25]

Computing the coefficients of the

chromatic polynomial is #P-hard. In
fact, even computing the value of
  is #P-hard at any rational
point k except for k = 1 and k = 2.[26]
There is no FPRAS for evaluating the
chromatic polynomial at any rational
point k ≥ 1.5 except for k = 2 unless
NP = RP.[27]

For edge coloring, the proof of

Vizing’s result gives an algorithm that
uses at most ∆+1 colors. However,
deciding between the two candidate
values for the edge chromatic number
is NP-complete.[28] In terms of
approximation algorithms, Vizing’s
algorithm shows that the edge
chromatic number can be
approximated to within 4/3, and the
hardness result shows that no
(4/3 − ε )-algorithm exists for any
ε > 0 unless P = NP. These are among
the oldest results in the literature of
approximation algorithms, even
though neither paper makes explicit
use of that notion.[29]

Applications
Scheduling

Vertex coloring models to a number

of scheduling problems.[30] In the
cleanest form, a given set of jobs
need to be assigned to time slots,
each job requires one such slot. Jobs
can be scheduled in any order, but
pairs of jobs may be in conflict in the
sense that they may not be assigned
to the same time slot, for example
because they both rely on a shared
resource. The corresponding graph
contains a vertex for every job and an
edge for every conflicting pair of jobs.
The chromatic number of the graph is
exactly the minimum makespan, the
optimal time to finish all jobs without
conflicts.

Details of the scheduling problem

define the structure of the graph. For
example, when assigning aircraft to
flights, the resulting conflict graph is
an interval graph, so the coloring
problem can be solved efficiently. In
bandwidth allocation to radio stations,
the resulting conflict graph is a unit
disk graph, so the coloring problem is
3-approximable.

Register allocation

A compiler is a computer program

that translates one computer
language into another. To improve the
execution time of the resulting code,
one of the techniques of compiler
optimization is register allocation,
where the most frequently used
values of the compiled program are
kept in the fast processor registers.
Ideally, values are assigned to
registers so that they can all reside in
the registers when they are used.

The textbook approach to this

problem is to model it as a graph
coloring problem.[31] The compiler
constructs an interference graph,
where vertices are variables and an
edge connects two vertices if they are
needed at the same time. If the graph
can be colored with k colors then any
set of variables needed at the same
time can be stored in at most k
registers.

Other applications
The problem of coloring a graph
arises in many practical areas such as
pattern matching, sports scheduling,
designing seating plans, exam
timetabling, the scheduling of taxis,
and solving Sudoku puzzles.[32]

Other colorings
Ramsey theory

An important class of improper

coloring problems is studied in
Ramsey theory, where the graph’s
edges are assigned to colors, and
there is no restriction on the colors of
incident edges. A simple example is
the friendship theorem, which states
that in any coloring of the edges of
  , the complete graph of six
vertices, there will be a
monochromatic triangle; often
illustrated by saying that any group of
six people either has three mutual
strangers or three mutual
acquaintances. Ramsey theory is
concerned with generalisations of this
idea to seek regularity amid disorder,
finding general conditions for the
existence of monochromatic
subgraphs with given structure.

Other colorings
Adjacent-vertex-distinguishing-
total coloring 
A total coloring with the additional
restriction that any two adjacent
vertices have different color sets
Acyclic coloring 
Every 2-chromatic subgraph is
acyclic
B-coloring 
a coloring of the vertices where
each color class contains a vertex
that has a neighbor in all other
color classes.
Circular coloring 
Motivated by task systems in which
production proceeds in a cyclic way
Cocoloring 
An improper vertex coloring where
every color class induces an
independent set or a clique
Complete coloring 
Every pair of colors appears on at
least one edge
Defective coloring 
An improper vertex coloring where
every color class induces a
bounded degree subgraph.
Distinguishing coloring 
An improper vertex coloring that
destroys all the symmetries of the
graph
Equitable coloring 
The sizes of color classes differ by
at most one
Exact coloring 
Every pair of colors appears on
exactly one edge
Fractional coloring 
Vertices may have multiple colors,
and on each edge the sum of the
color parts of each vertex is not
greater than one
Hamiltonian coloring 
Uses the length of the longest path
between two vertices, also known
as the detour distance
Harmonious coloring 
Every pair of colors appears on at
most one edge
Incidence coloring
Each adjacent incidence of vertex
and edge is colored with distinct
colors
Interval edge coloring 
A color of edges meeting in a
common vertex must be
contiguous
List coloring
Each vertex chooses from a list of
colors
List edge-coloring
Each edge chooses from a list of
colors
L(h, k)-coloring
Difference of colors at adjacent
vertices is at least h and difference
of colors of vertices at a distance
two is at least k. A particular case is
L(2,1)-coloring.

Oriented coloring 
Takes into account orientation of
edges of the graph
Path coloring 
Models a routing problem in graphs
Radio coloring 
Sum of the distance between the
vertices and the difference of their
colors is greater than k+1, where k
is a positive integer.
Rank coloring 
If two vertices have the same color
i, then every path between them
contain a vertex with color greater
than i
Subcoloring 
An improper vertex coloring where
every color class induces a union of
cliques
Sum coloring 
The criterion of minimalization is
the sum of colors
Star coloring 
Every 2-chromatic subgraph is a
disjoint collection of stars
Strong coloring 
Every color appears in every
partition of equal size exactly once
Strong edge coloring 
Edges are colored such that each
color class induces a matching
(equivalent to coloring the square
of the line graph)
T-coloring 
Absolute value of the difference
between two colors of adjacent
vertices must not belong to fixed
set T
Total coloring
Vertices and edges are colored
Centered coloring
Every connected induced subgraph
 has a color that is used exactly
once
Triangle-free edge coloring
The edges are colored so that each
color class forms a triangle-free
subgraph
Weak coloring 
An improper vertex coloring where
every non-isolated node has at
least one neighbor with a different
color

Coloring can also be considered for

signed graphs and gain graphs.

See also
See also

Wikimedia Commons has media

related to Graph coloring.

Edge coloring
Circular coloring
Critical graph
Graph homomorphism
Hajós construction
Mathematics of Sudoku
Multipartite graph
Uniquely colorable graph
Graph coloring game
Interval edge coloring
Notes
1. M. Kubale, History of graph
coloring, in Kubale (2004)
2. van Lint & Wilson (2001, Chap.
33)
3. Jensen & Toft (1995), p. 2
4. Brooks (1941)
5. Erdős, Paul (1959), "Graph theory
and probability", Canadian
Journal of Mathematics, 11: 34–
38, doi:10.4153/CJM-1959-003-
9.
6. Björklund, Husfeldt & Koivisto
(2009)
 7. Lawler (1976)
8. Beigel & Eppstein (2005)
9. Fomin, Gaspers & Saurabh (2007)
10. Wilf (1986)
11. Sekine, Imai & Tani (1995)
12. Welsh & Powell (1967)
13. Brélaz (1979)
14. Schneider (2010)
15. Cole & Vishkin (1986), see also
Cormen, Leiserson & Rivest
(1990, Section 30.5)
16. Goldberg, Plotkin & Shannon
(1988)
17. Schneider (2008)
18. Barenboim & Elkin (2009); Kuhn
(2009)
19. E.g. see Leith & Clifford (2006)
and Duffy, O'Connell &
Sapozhnikov (2008).
20. Garey, Johnson & Stockmeyer
(1974); Garey & Johnson (1979).
21. Dailey (1980)
22. Halldórsson (1993)
23. Zuckerman (2007)
24. Guruswami & Khanna (2000)
25. Khot (2001)
26. Jaeger, Vertigan & Welsh (1990)
27. Goldberg & Jerrum (2008)
28. Holyer (1981)
29. Crescenzi & Kann (1998)
30. Marx (2004)
31. Chaitin (1982)
32. Lewis, R. A Guide to Graph
Colouring: Algorithms and
Applications . Springer
International Publishers, 2015.

References
Barenboim, L.; Elkin, M. (2009),
"Distributed (∆ + 1)-coloring in linear (in
∆) time", Proceedings of the 41st
Symposium on Theory of Computing,
pp. 111–120, arXiv:0812.1379 ,
doi:10.1145/1536414.1536432 ,
ISBN 978-1-60558-506-2
Beigel, R.; Eppstein, D. (2005), "3-
coloring in time O(1.3289n)", Journal of
Algorithms, 54 (2)): 168–204,
doi:10.1016/j.jalgor.2004.06.008
Björklund, A.; Husfeldt, T.; Koivisto, M.
(2009), "Set partitioning via inclusion–
exclusion", SIAM Journal on Computing,
39 (2): 546–563,
doi:10.1137/070683933
Brélaz, D. (1979), "New methods to color
the vertices of a graph",
Communications of the ACM, 22 (4):
251–256, doi:10.1145/359094.359101
Brooks, R. L. (1941), "On colouring the
nodes of a network", Proceedings of the
Cambridge Philosophical Society, 37 (2):
194–197,
Bibcode:1941PCPS...37..194B ,
doi:10.1017/S030500410002168X
de Bruijn, N. G.; Erdős, P. (1951), "A
colour problem for infinite graphs and a
problem in the theory of relations"
(PDF), Nederl. Akad. Wetensch. Proc. Ser.
A, 54: 371–373 (= Indag. Math. 13)
Byskov, J.M. (2004), "Enumerating
maximal independent sets with
applications to graph colouring",
Operations Research Letters, 32 (6):
547–556, doi:10.1016/j.orl.2004.03.002
Chaitin, G. J. (1982), "Register allocation
& spilling via graph colouring", Proc.
1982 SIGPLAN Symposium on Compiler
Construction, pp. 98–105,
doi:10.1145/800230.806984 , ISBN 0-
89791-074-5
Cole, R.; Vishkin, U. (1986),
"Deterministic coin tossing with
applications to optimal parallel list
ranking", Information and Control, 70 (1):
32–53, doi:10.1016/S0019-
9958(86)80023-7
Cormen, T. H.; Leiserson, C. E.; Rivest, R.
L. (1990), Introduction to Algorithms (1st
ed.), The MIT Press
Crescenzi, P.; Kann, V. (December 1998),
"How to find the best approximation
results — a follow-up to Garey and
Johnson", ACM SIGACT News, 29 (4): 90,
doi:10.1145/306198.306210
Dailey, D. P. (1980), "Uniqueness of
colorability and colorability of planar 4-
regular graphs are NP-complete",
Discrete Mathematics, 30 (3): 289–293,
doi:10.1016/0012-365X(80)90236-8
Duffy, K.; O'Connell, N.; Sapozhnikov, A.
(2008), "Complexity analysis of a
decentralised graph colouring
algorithm" (PDF), Information
Processing Letters, 107 (2): 60–63,
doi:10.1016/j.ipl.2008.01.002
Fawcett, B. W. (1978), "On infinite full
colourings of graphs", Can. J. Math., 30:
455–457, doi:10.4153/cjm-1978-039-8
Fomin, F.V.; Gaspers, S.; Saurabh, S.
(2007), "Improved Exact Algorithms for
Counting 3- and 4-Colorings", Proc. 13th
Annual International Conference,
COCOON 2007, Lecture Notes in
Computer Science, 4598, Springer,
pp. 65–74, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-
73545-8_9 , ISBN 978-3-540-73544-1
Garey, M. R.; Johnson, D. S. (1979),
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to
the Theory of NP-Completeness, W.H.
Freeman, ISBN 0-7167-1045-5
Garey, M. R.; Johnson, D. S.; Stockmeyer,
L. (1974), "Some simplified NP-complete
problems", Proceedings of the Sixth
Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of
Computing , pp. 47–63,
doi:10.1145/800119.803884
Goldberg, L. A.; Jerrum, M. (July 2008),
"Inapproximability of the Tutte
polynomial", Information and
Computation, 206 (7): 908–929,
arXiv:cs/0605140 ,
doi:10.1016/j.ic.2008.04.003
Goldberg, A. V.; Plotkin, S. A.; Shannon,
G. E. (1988), "Parallel symmetry-breaking
in sparse graphs", SIAM Journal on
Discrete Mathematics, 1 (4): 434–446,
doi:10.1137/0401044
Guruswami, V.; Khanna, S. (2000), "On
the hardness of 4-coloring a 3-colorable
graph", Proceedings of the 15th Annual
IEEE Conference on Computational
Complexity, pp. 188–197,
doi:10.1109/CCC.2000.856749 , ISBN 0-
7695-0674-7
Halldórsson, M. M. (1993), "A still better
performance guarantee for approximate
graph coloring", Information Processing
Letters, 45: 19–23, doi:10.1016/0020-
0190(93)90246-6
Holyer, I. (1981), "The NP-completeness
of edge-coloring", SIAM Journal on
Computing, 10 (4): 718–720,
doi:10.1137/0210055
Jaeger, F.; Vertigan, D. L.; Welsh, D. J. A.
(1990), "On the computational
complexity of the Jones and Tutte
polynomials", Mathematical Proceedings
of the Cambridge Philosophical Society,
108: 35–53,
Bibcode:1990MPCPS.108...35J ,
doi:10.1017/S0305004100068936
Jensen, T. R.; Toft, B. (1995), Graph
Coloring Problems, Wiley-Interscience,
New York, ISBN 0-471-02865-7
Khot, S. (2001), "Improved
inapproximability results for MaxClique,
chromatic number and approximate
graph coloring", Proc. 42nd Annual
Symposium on Foundations of Computer
Science, pp. 600–609,
doi:10.1109/SFCS.2001.959936 ,
ISBN 0-7695-1116-3
Kubale, M. (2004), Graph Colorings,
American Mathematical Society, ISBN 0-
8218-3458-4
Kuhn, F. (2009), "Weak graph colorings:
distributed algorithms and applications",
Proceedings of the 21st Symposium on
Parallelism in Algorithms and
Architectures, pp. 138–144,
doi:10.1145/1583991.1584032 ,
ISBN 978-1-60558-606-9
Lawler, E.L. (1976), "A note on the
complexity of the chromatic number
problem", Information Processing
Letters, 5 (3): 66–67, doi:10.1016/0020-
0190(76)90065-X
Leith, D.J.; Clifford, P. (2006), "A Self-
Managed Distributed Channel Selection
Algorithm for WLAN", Proc. RAWNET
2006, Boston, MA (PDF), retrieved
2016-03-03
Lewis, R.M.R. (2016), A Guide to Graph
Colouring: Algorithms and Applications ,
Springer International Publishing,
ISBN 978-3-319-25728-0
Linial, N. (1992), "Locality in distributed
graph algorithms", SIAM Journal on
Computing, 21 (1): 193–201,
doi:10.1137/0221015
van Lint, J. H.; Wilson, R. M. (2001), A
Course in Combinatorics (2nd ed.),
Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-
80340-3
Marx, Dániel (2004), "Graph colouring
problems and their applications in
scheduling", Periodica Polytechnica,
Electrical Engineering, 48 (1–2), pp. 11–
16, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.95.4268
Mycielski, J. (1955), "Sur le coloriage
des graphes" (PDF), Colloq. Math., 3:
161–162.
Nešetřil, Jaroslav; Ossona de Mendez,
Patrice (2012), "Theorem 3.13", Sparsity:
Graphs, Structures, and Algorithms,
Algorithms and Combinatorics, 28,
Heidelberg: Springer, p. 42,
doi:10.1007/978-3-642-27875-4 ,
ISBN 978-3-642-27874-7, MR 2920058 .
Panconesi, Alessandro; Rizzi, Romeo
(2001), "Some simple distributed
algorithms for sparse networks",
Distributed Computing, Berlin, New York:
Springer-Verlag, 14 (2): 97–100,
doi:10.1007/PL00008932 , ISSN 0178-
2770
Panconesi, A.; Srinivasan, A. (1996), "On
the complexity of distributed network
decomposition", Journal of Algorithms,
20
Sekine, K.; Imai, H.; Tani, S. (1995),
"Computing the Tutte polynomial of a
graph of moderate size", Proc. 6th
International Symposium on Algorithms
and Computation (ISAAC 1995), Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, 1004,
Springer, pp. 224–233,
doi:10.1007/BFb0015427 , ISBN 3-540-
60573-8
Schneider, J. (2010), "A new technique
for distributed symmetry breaking"
(PDF), Proceedings of the Symposium on
Principles of Distributed Computing
Schneider, J. (2008), "A log-star
distributed maximal independent set
algorithm for growth-bounded graphs"
(PDF), Proceedings of the Symposium on
Principles of Distributed Computing
Welsh, D. J. A.; Powell, M. B. (1967), "An
upper bound for the chromatic number
of a graph and its application to
timetabling problems", The Computer
Journal, 10 (1): 85–86,
doi:10.1093/comjnl/10.1.85
West, D. B. (1996), Introduction to Graph
Theory, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-227828-
6
Wilf, H. S. (1986), Algorithms and
Complexity, Prentice–Hall
Zuckerman, D. (2007), "Linear degree
extractors and the inapproximability of
Max Clique and Chromatic Number",
Theory of Computing, 3: 103–128,
doi:10.4086/toc.2007.v003a006
Zykov, A. A. (1949), "О некоторых
 свойствах линейных комплексов"
[On some properties of linear
complexes], Mat. Sbornik N.S. (in
Russian), 24 (66): 163–188,
MR 0035428 . Translated into English in
Amer. Math. Soc. Translation, 1952,
MR0051516 .

External links
High-Performance Graph Colouring
Algorithms Suite of 8 different
algorithms (implemented in C++)
used in the book A Guide to Graph
Colouring: Algorithms and
Applications (Springer International
Publishers, 2015).
Graph Coloring Page by Joseph
Culberson (graph coloring
programs)
CoLoRaTiOn by Jim Andrews and
Mike Fellows is a graph coloring
puzzle
Links to Graph Coloring source
codes
Code for efficiently computing
Tutte, Chromatic and Flow
Polynomials by Gary Haggard,
David J. Pearce and Gordon Royle
A graph coloring Web App by Jose
Antonio Martin H.
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Graph_coloring&oldid=894741542"

Last edited 3 months ago by Lit…

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0

unless otherwise noted.