Improved bounds on the chromatic numbers of the square of Kneser graphs

TL;DR

This paper improves upper bounds on the chromatic number of the square of Kneser graphs, providing simpler proofs and establishing asymptotic behavior for certain parameters.

Contribution

It introduces tighter bounds for the chromatic number of squared Kneser graphs and simplifies the proof techniques compared to prior work.

Findings

Upper bound of 2k+2 when 2k+1=2^n-1

Upper bound of (8/3)k+(20/3) for all k≥2

Asymptotic behavior of χ(K^2(2k+r,k)) as Θ(k^r)

Abstract

The Kneser graph $K(n,k)$ is the graph whose vertices are the $k$-elements subsets of an $n$-element set, with two vertices adjacent if the sets are disjoint. The square $G^2$ of a graph $G$ is the graph defined on $V(G)$ such that two vertices $u$ and $v$ are adjacent in $G^2$ if the distance between $u$ and $v$ in $G$ is at most 2. Determining the chromatic number of the square of the Kneser graph $K(2k+1, k)$ is an interesting problem, but not much progress has been made. Kim and Nakprasit \cite{2004KN} showed that $\chi(K^2(2k+1,k)) \leq 4k+2$, and Chen, Lih, and Wu \cite{2009CLW} showed that $\chi(K^2(2k+1,k)) \leq 3k+2$ for $k \geq 3$. In this paper, we give improved upper bounds on $\chi(K^2(2k+1,k))$. We show that $\chi(K^2(2k+1,k)) \leq 2k+2$, if $ 2k +1 = 2^n -1$ for some positive integer $n$. Also we show that $\chi(K^2(2k+1,k)) \leq \frac{8}{3}k+\frac{20}{3}$ for every integer $k\ge 2$. In addition to giving improved upper bounds, our proof is concise and can be easily understood by readers while the proof in \cite{2009CLW} is very complicated. Moreover, we show that $\chi(K^2(2k+r,k))=\Theta(k^r)$ for each integer $2 \leq r \leq k-2$.