Given a digraph D=(V,A) on n vertices and a vertex v∈V, the cycle-degree of v is the minimum size of a set S⊆V(D)∖{v} intersecting every directed cycle of D containing v. From this definition of cycle-degree, we define the c-degeneracy (or cycle-degeneracy) of D, which we denote by δc∗(D). It appears to be a nice generalisation of the undirected degeneracy. For instance, the dichromatic number χ→(D) of D is bounded above by δc∗(D)+1, where χ→(D) is the minimum integer k such that D admits a k-dicolouring, i.e., a partition of its vertices into k acyclic subdigraphs.In this work, using this new definition of cycle-degeneracy, we extend several evidences for Cereceda’s conjecture (Cereceda, 2007) to digraphs. The k-dicolouring graph of D, denoted by Dk(D), is the undirected graph whose vertices are the k-dicolourings of D and in which two k-dicolourings are adjacent if they differ on the colour of exactly one vertex. This is a generalisation of the k-colouring graph of an undirected graph G, in which the vertices are the proper k-colourings of G.We show that Dk(D) has diameter at most Oδc∗(D)(nδc∗(D)+1) (respectively O(n2) and (δc∗(D)+1)n) when k is at least δc∗(D)+2 (respectively 32(δc∗(D)+1) and 2(δc∗(D)+1)). This improves known results on digraph redicolouring (Bousquet et al., 2023). Next, we extend a result due to Feghali (2021) to digraphs, showing that Dd+1(D) has diameter at most Od,ϵ(n(logn)d−1) when D has maximum average cycle-degree at most d−ϵ.We then show that two proofs of Bonamy and Bousquet (2018) for undirected graphs can be extended to digraphs. The first one uses the digrundy number of a digraph χ→g(D), which is the worst number of colours used in a greedy dicolouring. If k≥χ→g(D)+1, we show that Dk(D) has diameter at most 4⋅χ→(D)⋅n. The second one uses the D-width of a digraph, denoted by Dw(D), which is a generalisation of the treewidth to digraphs. If k≥Dw(D)+2, we show that Dk(D) has diameter at most 2(n2+n).Finally, we give a general theorem which makes a connection between the recolourability of a digraph D and the recolourability of its underlying graph UG(D). Assume that G is a class of undirected graphs, closed under edge-deletion and with bounded chromatic number, and let k≥χ(G) (i.e., k≥χ(G) for every G∈G) be such that, for every n-vertex graph G∈G, the diameter of the k-colouring graph of G is bounded by f(n) for some function f. We show that, for every n-vertex digraph D such that UG(D)∈G, the diameter of Dk(D) is bounded by 2f(n). For instance, this result directly extends a number of results on planar graph recolouring to planar digraph redicolouring.
Read full abstract