Skip to main content
Log in

A New Upper Bound on the Chromatic Number of Graphs with No Odd Kt Minor

  • Original paper
  • Published:
Combinatorica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Gerards and Seymour conjectured that every graph with no odd Kt minor is (t − 1)-colorable. This is a strengthening of the famous Hadwiger’s Conjecture. Geelen et al. proved that every graph with no odd Kt minor is \(O(t\sqrt {\log t} )\)-colorable. Using the methods the present authors and Postle recently developed for coloring graphs with no Kt minor, we make the first improvement on this bound by showing that every graph with no odd Kt minor is O(t(logt)β)-colorable for every β > 1/4.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. B. Bollobás and A. Thomason: Highly linked graphs, Combinatorica 16 (1996), 313–320.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. P. A. Catlin: A bound on the chromatic number of a graph, Discrete Math. 22 (1978), 81–83.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. M. Chudnovsky, J. Geelen, B. Gerards, L. Goddyn, M. Lohman and P. Seymour: Packing non-zero A-paths in group-labelled graphs, Combinatorica 26 (2006), 521–532.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. P. Erdős: On some extremal problems in graph theory, Israel. J. Math. 3 (1965), 113–116.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  5. J. Geelen, B. Gerards, B. Reed, P. Seymour and A. Vetta: On the odd-minor variant of Hadwiger’s conjecture, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 99 (2009), 20–29.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. H. Hadwiger: Über eine Klassifikation der Streckenkomplexe, Vierteljschr. Naturforsch. Ges. Zürich 88 (1943), 133–142.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. T. R. Jensen and B. Toft: Graph coloring problems, Wiley-Interscience Series in Discrete Mathematics and Optimization, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1995. A Wiley-Interscience Publication.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. K. Kawarabayashi: Note on coloring graphs without odd-Kk-minors, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 99 (2009), 728–731.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. A. V. Kostochka: The minimum Hadwiger number for graphs with a given mean degree of vertices, Metody Diskret. Analiz. 38 (1982), 37–58.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. A. V. Kostochka: Lower bound of the Hadwiger number of graphs by their average degree, Combinatorica 4 (1984), 307–316.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  11. K.-i. Kawarabayashi and B. Reed: Highly parity linked graphs, Combinatorica 29 (2009), 215–225.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. K.-i. Kawarabayashi and Z.-X. Song: Some remarks on the odd Hadwiger’s conjecture, Combinatorica 27 (2007), 429–438.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. W. Mader: Existence of n-times connected subgraphs in graphs having large edge density, in: Essays from the Mathematical Seminar of the University of Hamburg, volume 37, 86–97, 1972.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. S. Norin and Z.-X. Song: Breaking the degeneracy barrier for coloring graphs with no Kt minor, 2019. arXiv:1910.09378.

  15. L. Postle: Halfway to Hadwiger’s Conjecture, 2019. arXiv:1911.01491.

  16. P. Seymour: Hadwiger’s conjecture, in: Open problems in mathematics, 417–437, Springer, 2016.

  17. A. Thomason: An extremal function for contractions of graphs, Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 95 (1984), 261–265.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  18. A. Thomason: The extremal function for complete minors, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 81 (2001), 318–338.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  19. R. Thomas and P. Wollan: An improved linear edge bound for graph linkages, European J. Combin. 26 (2005), 309–324.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank referees for their valuable comments. The research presented in this paper was partially conducted during the visit of the second author to the Institute of Basic Science in Daejeon, Korea. The second author thanks the Institute of Basic Science for the hospitality, and Sang-il Oum for helpful discussion.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zi-Xia Song.

Additional information

Supported by an NSERC grant.

Supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DMS-1854903.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Norin, S., Song, ZX. A New Upper Bound on the Chromatic Number of Graphs with No Odd Kt Minor. Combinatorica 42, 137–149 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00493-021-4390-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00493-021-4390-3

Mathematics Subject Classification (2010)

Navigation