Chromatic Number for a Generalization of Cartesian Product Graphs

Abstract

Let ${\cal G}$ be a class of graphs. A $d$-fold grid over ${\cal G}$ is a graph obtained from a $d$-dimensional rectangular grid of vertices by placing a graph from ${\cal G}$ on each of the lines parallel to one of the axes. Thus each vertex belongs to $d$ of these subgraphs. The class of $d$-fold grids over ${\cal G}$ is denoted by ${\cal G}^d$. Let $f({\cal G};d)=\max_{G\in{\cal G}^d}\chi(G)$. If each graph in ${\cal G}$ is $k$-colorable, then $f({\cal G};d)\le k^d$. We show that this bound is best possible by proving that $f({\cal G};d)=k^d$ when ${\cal G}$ is the class of all $k$-colorable graphs. We also show that $f({\cal G};d)\ge{\left\lfloor\sqrt{{d\over 6\log d}}\right\rfloor}$ when ${\cal G}$ is the class of graphs with at most one edge, and $f({\cal G};d)\ge {\left\lfloor{d\over 6\log d}\right\rfloor}$ when ${\cal G}$ is the class of graphs with maximum degree $1$.