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Equitable Clique-Coloring in Claw-Free Graphs with Maximum Degree at Most 4

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Abstract

A clique of a graph G is a set of pairwise adjacent vertices of G. A clique-coloring of G is an assignment of colors to the vertices of G in such a way that no inclusion-wise maximal clique of size at least two of G is monochromatic. An equitable clique-coloring of G is a clique-coloring such that any two color classes differ in size by at most one. Bacsó and Tuza proved that connected claw-free graphs with maximum degree at most four, other than chordless odd cycles of order greater than three, are 2-clique-colorable and a 2-clique-coloring can be found in \(O(n^{2})\) Bacsó and Tuza (Discrete Math Theor Comput Sci 11(2):15–24, 2009). In this paper we prove that every connected claw-free graph with maximum degree at most four, not a chordless odd cycle of order greater than three, has an equitable 2-clique-coloring. In addition we improve the algorithm described in the paper mentioned by giving an equitable 2-clique-coloring in linear time for this class of graphs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the referees for valuable comments and suggestions.

Funding

This research was supported by National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11601262, 11801361) and Shanghai Nature Science Foundation of China(No. 18ZR1416300).

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Correspondence to Zuosong Liang.

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This research was partially supported by National Nature Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11601262 and 11801361) and Shanghai Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 18ZR1416300).

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Liang, Z., Dong, Y., Zhao, Y. et al. Equitable Clique-Coloring in Claw-Free Graphs with Maximum Degree at Most 4. Graphs and Combinatorics 37, 445–454 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00373-020-02253-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00373-020-02253-x

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