Constrained Colouring and σ-Hypergraphs

Abstract

A constrained colouring or, more specifically, an (α, β)-colouring of a hypergraph H, is an assignment of colours to its vertices such that no edge of H contains less than α or more than β vertices with different colours. This notion, introduced by Bujtás and Tuza, generalises both classical hypergraph colourings and more general Voloshin colourings of hypergraphs. In fact, for r-uniform hypergraphs, classical colourings correspond to (2, r)-colourings while an important instance of Voloshin colourings of r-uniform hypergraphs gives (2, r −1)-colourings. One intriguing aspect of all these colourings, not present in classical colourings, is that H can have gaps in its (α, β)-spectrum, that is, for k1 < k2 < k3, H would be (α, β)-colourable using k1 and using k3 colours, but not using k2 colours.

Keywords

• σ-hypergraphs
• constrained colourings
• hypergraph colourings.