On $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs: their structure, non-$3$-colorability, and critical edges

TL;DR

This paper provides an elementary proof of the non-3-colorability of 4-chromatic Schrijver graphs, describes their structure, explores their surface quadrangulations, and characterizes critical edges, extending to higher chromatic numbers.

Contribution

It offers a new elementary proof for non-3-colorability, details the structure of 4-chromatic Schrijver graphs, and characterizes critical edges and surface quadrangulations.

Findings

Proved non-3-colorability of 4-chromatic Schrijver graphs.

Identified subgraphs quadrangulating Klein bottle and projective plane.

Characterized color-critical edges in 4-chromatic Schrijver graphs.

Abstract

We give an elementary proof for the non-$3$-colorability of $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs thus providing such a proof also for $4$-chromatic Kneser graphs. To this end we use a complete description of the structure of $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs that was already given by Braun and even earlier in an unpublished manuscript by Li. We also address connections to surface quadrangulations. In particular, we show that a spanning subgraph of $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs quadrangulates the Klein bottle, while another spanning subgraph quadrangulates the projective plane. The latter is a special case of a result by Kaiser and Stehl\'{\i}k. We characterize the color-critical edges of $4$-chromatic Schrijver graphs and also present preliminary results toward the characterization of color-critical edges in Schrijver graphs of higher chromatic number. Finally, we show that (apart from two cases of small parameters) the subgraphs we present that quadrangulate the Klein bottle are edge-color-critical. The analogous result for the subgraphs quadrangulating the projective plane is an immediate consequence of earlier results by Gimbel and Thomassen and was already noted by Kaiser and Stehl\'{\i}k.