Chromatic Properties of the Pancake Graphs

Abstract

Chromatic properties of the Pancake graphs Pn, n ⩾ 2, that are Cayley graphs on the symmetric group Symn generated by prefix-reversals are investigated in the paper. It is proved that for any n ⩾ 3 the total chromatic number of Pn is n, and it is shown that the chromatic index of Pn is n − 1. We present upper bounds on the chromatic number of the Pancake graphs Pn, which improve Brooks’ bound for n ⩾ 7 and Katlin’s bound for n ⩽ 28. Algorithms of a total n-coloring and a proper (n − 1)-coloring are given.

Keywords

• pancake graph
• cayley graphs
• symmetric group
• chromatic number
• total chromatic number
• 05c15
• 05c25
• 05c69