Variants of the Gy\`arf\`as-Sumner Conjecture: Oriented Trees and Rainbow Paths

TL;DR

This paper advances the understanding of rainbow paths in graphs by providing improved bounds for the minimum chromatic number needed to guarantee induced rainbow paths of a given length in various graph classes, including those free of certain cycles.

Contribution

It introduces new upper bounds for the function ll(s,) for graphs avoiding specific cycles and complete bipartite graphs, significantly improving previous results and extending to higher girth graphs.

Findings

ll(s,K_{2,r})  q; (r-1)(s-1)(s-2)/2+s

ll(s,C_4)  rac{s^2-s+2}{2}

ll(s,\u001f)  s^{1+4/(g-4)} for graphs with girth g  5

Abstract

Given a finite family $\mathcal{F}$ of graphs, we say that a graph $G$ is "$\mathcal{F}$-free" if $G$ does not contain any graph in $\mathcal{F}$ as a subgraph. A vertex-colored graph $H$ is called "rainbow" if no two vertices of $H$ have the same color. Given an integer $s$ and a finite family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, let $\ell(s,\mathcal{F})$ denote the smallest integer such that any properly vertex-colored $\mathcal{F}$-free graph $G$ having $\chi(G)\geq\ell(s,\mathcal{F})$ contains an induced rainbow path on $s$ vertices. Scott and Seymour showed that $\ell(s,K)$ exists for every complete graph $K$. A conjecture of N. R. Aravind states that $\ell(s,C_3)=s$. The upper bound on $\ell(s,C_3)$ that can be obtained using the methods of Scott and Seymour setting $K=C_3$ are, however, super-exponential. Gy\'arf\'as and S\'ark\"ozy showed that $\ell(s,\{C_3,C_4\})=\mathcal{O}\big((2s)^{2s}\big)$. For $r\geq 2$, we show that $\ell(s,K_{2,r})\leq (r-1)(s-1)(s-2)/2+s$ and therefore, $\ell(s,C_4)\leq\frac{s^2-s+2}{2}$. This significantly improves Gy\'arf\'as and S\'ark\"ozy's bound and also covers a bigger class of graphs. We adapt our proof to achieve much stronger upper bounds for graphs of higher girth: we prove that $\ell(s,\{C_3,C_4,\ldots,C_{g-1}\})\leq s^{1+\frac{4}{g-4}}$, where $g\geq 5$. Moreover, in each case, our results imply the existence of at least $s!/2$ distinct induced rainbow paths on $s$ vertices. Along the way, we obtain some results on related problems on oriented graphs. For $r\geq 2$, let $\mathcal{B}_r$ denote the orientations of $K_{2,r}$ in which one vertex has out-degree or in-degree $r$. We show that every $\mathcal{B}_r$-free oriented graph $G$ having $\chi(G)\geq (r-1)(s-1)(s-2)+2s+1$ and every bikernel-perfect oriented graph $G$ with girth $g\geq 5$ having $\chi(G)\geq 2s^{1+\frac{4}{g-4}}$ contains every $s$ vertex oriented tree as an induced subgraph.