A Survey on the Computational Complexity of Colouring Graphs with Forbidden Subgraphs ? Petr A. Golovach1, Matthew Johnson2, Daniel¨ Paulusma2, and Jian Song2 1 Department of Informatics, Bergen University, PB 7803, 5020 Bergen, Norway
[email protected] 2 School of Engineering and Computing Sciences, Durham University, Science Laboratories, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom fmatthew.johnson2,daniel.paulusma,
[email protected] Abstract. For a positive integer k, a k-colouring of a graph G = (V; E) is a mapping c : V ! f1; 2; : : : ; kg such that c(u) 6= c(v) whenever uv 2 E. The COLOURING problem is to decide, for a given G and k, whether a k-colouring of G exists. If k is fixed (that is, it is not part of the input), we have the decision problem k-COLOURING instead. We survey known results on the computational complexity of COLOURING and k-COLOURING for graph classes that are characterized by one or two forbidden induced subgraphs. We also consider a number of variants: for example, where the problem is to extend a partial colouring, or where lists of permissible colours are given for each vertex. Finally, we also survey results for graph classes defined by some other forbidden pattern. 1 Introduction To colour a graph is to label its vertices so that no two adjacent vertices have the same label. We call the labels colours. In a graph colouring problem one typically seeks to colour a graph using as few colours as possible, or perhaps simply to decide whether a given number of colours is sufficient.