On Chromatic Number of Colored Mixed Graphs

Abstract

An $(m,n)$-colored mixed graph $G$ is a graph with its arcs having one of the $m$ different colors and edges having one of the $n$ different colors. A homomorphism $f$ of an $(m,n)$-colored mixed graph $G$ to an $(m,n)$-colored mixed graph $H$ is a vertex mapping such that if $uv$ is an arc (edge) of color $c$ in $G$, then $f(u)f(v)$ is an arc (edge) of color $c$ in $H$. The \textit{$(m,n)$-colored mixed chromatic number} $\chi_{(m,n)}(G)$ of an $(m,n)$-colored mixed graph $G$ is the order (number of vertices) of the smallest homomorphic image of $G$. This notion was introduced by Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il and Raspaud (2000, J. Combin. Theory, Ser. B 80, 147--155). They showed that $\chi_{(m,n)}(G) \leq k(2m+n)^{k-1}$ where $G$ is a $k$-acyclic colorable graph. We proved the tightness of this bound. We also showed that the acyclic chromatic number of a graph is bounded by $k^2 + k^{2 + \lceil log_{(2m+n)} log_{(2m+n)} k \rceil}$ if its $(m,n)$-colored mixed chromatic number is at most $k$. Furthermore, using probabilistic method, we showed that for graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$ its $(m,n)$-colored mixed chromatic number is at most $2(\Delta-1)^{2m+n} (2m+n)^{\Delta-1}$. In particular, the last result directly improves the upper bound $2\Delta^2 2^{\Delta}$ of oriented chromatic number of graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$, obtained by Kostochka, Sopena and Zhu (1997, J. Graph Theory 24, 331--340) to $2(\Delta-1)^2 2^{\Delta -1}$. We also show that there exists a graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ and $(m,n)$-colored mixed chromatic number at least $(2m+n)^{\Delta / 2}$.