Coloring graph classes with no induced fork via perfect divisibility

T. Karthick, Jenny Kaufmann, Vaidy Sivaraman

Abstract: For a graph $G$, $χ(G)$ will denote its chromatic number, and $ω(G)$ its clique number. A graph $G$ is said to be perfectly divisible if for all induced subgraphs $H$ of $G$, $V(H)$ can be partitioned into two sets $A$, $B$ such that $H[A]$ is perfect and $ω(H[B]) < ω(H)$. An integer-valued function $f$ is called a $χ$-binding function for a hereditary class of graphs $\cal C$ if $χ(G) \leq f(ω(G))$ for every graph $G\in \cal C$. The fork is the graph obtained from the complete bipartite graph $K_{1,3}$ by subdividing an edge once. The problem of finding a polynomial $χ$-binding function for the class of fork-free graphs is open. In this paper, we study the structure of some classes of fork-free graphs; in particular, we study the class of (fork,$F$)-free graphs $\cal G$ in the context of perfect divisibility, where $F$ is a graph on five vertices with a stable set of size three, and show that every $G\in \cal G$ satisfies $χ(G)\leq ω(G)^2$. We also note that the class $\cal G$ does not admit a linear $χ$-binding function.

External IDs:dblp:journals/corr/abs-2104-02807