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1. Complexity of Ck-Coloring in Hereditary Classes of Graphs

   Chudnovsky, M.; Huang, S.; Rzazewski, P.; Spirkl, S.; and Zhong, M. (September 2019, European Symposium on Algorithms)

   For a graph F, a graph G is F-free if it does not contain an induced subgraph isomorphic to F. For two graphs G and H, an H-coloring of G is a mapping f : V (G) → V (H) such that for every edge uv ∈ E(G) it holds that f(u)f(v) ∈ E(H). We are interested in the complexity of the problem H-Coloring, which asks for the existence of an H-coloring of an input graph G. In particular, we consider H-Coloring of F-free graphs, where F is a fixed graph and H is an odd cycle of length at least 5. This problem is closely related to the well known open problem of determining the complexity of 3-Coloring of Pt-free graphs. We show that for every odd k ≥ 5 the Ck-Coloring problem, even in the precoloring-extension variant, can be solved in polynomial time in P9-free graphs. On the other hand, we prove that the extension version of Ck-Coloring is NP-complete for F-free graphs whenever some component of F is not a subgraph of a subdivided claw. 

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2. The spread of a finite group

   https://doi.org/doi.org/10.4007/annals.2021.193.2.5  

   Burness, Tim; Guralnick, Robert; Harper, Scott (January 2021, Annals of mathematics)

   null (Ed.)

   A group G is said to be 3/2-generated if every nontrivial element belongs to a generating pair. It is easy to see that if G has this property, then every proper quotient of G is cyclic. In this paper we prove that the converse is true for finite groups, which settles a conjecture of Breuer, Guralnick and Kantor from 2008. In fact, we prove a much stronger result, which solves a problem posed by Brenner and Wiegold in 1975. Namely, if G is a finite group and every proper quotient of G is cyclic, then for any pair of nontrivial elements x1, x2 ϵ G, there exists y ϵ G such that G = ⟨x1, y⟩ = ⟨x2, y⟩. In other words, s(G) ⩾ 2, where s(G) is the spread of G. Moreover, if u(G) denotes the more restrictive uniform spread of G, then we can completely characterise the finite groups G with u(G) = 0 and u(G) = 1. To prove these results, we first establish a reduction to almost simple groups. For simple groups, the result was proved by Guralnick and Kantor in 2000 using probabilistic methods, and since then the almost simple groups have been the subject of several papers. By combining our reduction theorem and this earlier work, it remains to handle the groups with socle an exceptional group of Lie type, and this is the case we treat in this paper. 

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3. Hyperbolic families and coloring graphs on surfaces

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1090/btran/26  

   Postle, Luke; Thomas, Robin (December 2018, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. Series B)

   We develop a theory of linear isoperimetric inequalities for graphs on surfaces and apply it to coloring problems, as follows. Let $ G$ be a graph embedded in a fixed surface $$ \Sigma $$ of genus $ g$ and let $$ L=(L(v):v\in V(G))$$ be a collection of lists such that either each list has size at least five, or each list has size at least four and $ G$ is triangle-free, or each list has size at least three and $ G$ has no cycle of length four or less. An $ L$-coloring of $ G$ is a mapping $$ \phi $$ with domain $ V(G)$ such that $$ \phi (v)\in L(v)$$ for every $$ v\in V(G)$$ and $$ \phi (v)\ne \phi (u)$$ for every pair of adjacent vertices $$ u,v\in V(G)$$. We prove if every non-null-homotopic cycle in $ G$ has length $$ \Omega (\log g)$$, then $ G$ has an $ L$-coloring, if $ G$ does not have an $ L$-coloring, but every proper subgraph does (``$ L$-critical graph''), then $$ \vert V(G)\vert=O(g)$$, if every non-null-homotopic cycle in $ G$ has length $$ \Omega (g)$$, and a set $$ X\subseteq V(G)$$ of vertices that are pairwise at distance $$ \Omega (1)$$ is precolored from the corresponding lists, then the precoloring extends to an $ L$-coloring of $ G$, if every non-null-homotopic cycle in $ G$ has length $$ \Omega (g)$$, and the graph $ G$ is allowed to have crossings, but every two crossings are at distance $$ \Omega (1)$$, then $ G$ has an $ L$-coloring, if $ G$ has at least one $ L$-coloring, then it has at least $$ 2^{\Omega (\vert V(G)\vert)}$$ distinct $ L$-colorings. We show that the above assertions are consequences of certain isoperimetric inequalities satisfied by $ L$-critical graphs, and we study the structure of families of embedded graphs that satisfy those inequalities. It follows that the above assertions hold for other coloring problems, as long as the corresponding critical graphs satisfy the same inequalities. 

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4. Even pairs in Berge graphs with no balanced skew-partitions

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.disc.2024.114388  

   Abrishami, Tara; Chudnovsky, Maria; Tang, Yaqian (May 2025, Discrete Mathematics)

   Let G be a Berge graph that has no odd prism and no antihole of length at least six as an induced subgraph. We show that every such graph G with no balanced skew-partition is either complete or has an even pair. 

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5. Fluctuations of subgraph counts in graphon based random graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963548322000335  

   Bhattacharya, Bhaswar B.; Chatterjee, Anirban; Janson, Svante (May 2023, Combinatorics, Probability and Computing)

   Abstract Given a graphon $$W$$ and a finite simple graph $$H$$ , with vertex set $V(H)$ , denote by $$X_n(H, W)$$ the number of copies of $$H$$ in a $$W$$ -random graph on $$n$$ vertices. The asymptotic distribution of $$X_n(H, W)$$ was recently obtained by Hladký, Pelekis, and Šileikis [17] in the case where $$H$$ is a clique. In this paper, we extend this result to any fixed graph $$H$$ . Towards this we introduce a notion of $$H$$ -regularity of graphons and show that if the graphon $$W$$ is not $$H$$ -regular, then $$X_n(H, W)$$ has Gaussian fluctuations with scaling $$n^{|V(H)|-\frac{1}{2}}$$ . On the other hand, if $$W$$ is $$H$$ -regular, then the fluctuations are of order $$n^{|V(H)|-1}$$ and the limiting distribution of $$X_n(H, W)$$ can have both Gaussian and non-Gaussian components, where the non-Gaussian component is a (possibly) infinite weighted sum of centred chi-squared random variables with the weights determined by the spectral properties of a graphon derived from $$W$$ . Our proofs use the asymptotic theory of generalised $$U$$ -statistics developed by Janson and Nowicki [22]. We also investigate the structure of $$H$$ -regular graphons for which either the Gaussian or the non-Gaussian component of the limiting distribution (but not both) is degenerate. Interestingly, there are also $$H$$ -regular graphons $$W$$ for which both the Gaussian or the non-Gaussian components are degenerate, that is, $$X_n(H, W)$$ has a degenerate limit even under the scaling $$n^{|V(H)|-1}$$ . We give an example of this degeneracy with $$H=K_{1, 3}$$ (the 3-star) and also establish non-degeneracy in a few examples. This naturally leads to interesting open questions on higher order degeneracies. 

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