The road-colouring problem

Abstract

LetG be a finite directed graph which is irreducible and aperiodic. Assume each vertex ofG leads to at least two other vertices, and assumeG has a cycle of prime length which is a proper subset ofG. Then there exist two functionsr:G →G andb:G →G such that ifr(x)=y andb(x)=z thenx →y andx →z inG andy ≠z and such that some composition ofr’s andb’s is a constant function.