Polynomial $\chi$-binding functions for $t$-broom-free graphs
- Series
- Graph Theory Seminar
- Time
- Tuesday, September 7, 2021 - 15:45 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- Skiles 005
- Speaker
- Joshua Schroeder – Georgia Institute of Technology – jschroeder35@gatech.edu
For any positive integer $t$, a $t$-broom is a graph obtained from $K_{1,t+1}$ by subdividing an edge once. In this paper, we show that, for graphs $G$ without induced $t$-brooms, we have $\chi(G) = o(\omega(G)^{t+1})$, where $\chi(G)$ and $\omega(G)$ are the chromatic number and clique number of $G$, respectively. When $t=2$, this answers a question of Schiermeyer and Randerath. Moreover, for $t=2$, we strengthen the bound on $\chi(G)$ to $7.5\omega(G)^2$, confirming a conjecture of Sivaraman. For $t\geq 3$ and {$t$-broom, $K_{t,t}$}-free graphs, we improve the bound to $o(\omega^{t-1+\frac{2}{t+1}})$. Joint work with Xiaonan Liu, Zhiyu Wang, and Xingxing Yu.