Heawood number

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A 9-coloured triple torus (genus-3 surface) - dotted lines represent handles Taxel genus 3 colouring.svg
A 9-coloured triple torus (genus-3 surface) – dotted lines represent handles

In mathematics, the Heawood number of a surface is an upper bound for the number of colors that suffice to color any graph embedded in the surface.

In 1890 Heawood proved for all surfaces except the sphere that no more than

colors are needed to color any graph embedded in a surface of Euler characteristic , or genus for an orientable surface. [1] The number became known as Heawood number in 1976.

A 6-colored Klein bottle, the only exception to the Heawood conjecture Klein bottle colouring.svg
A 6-colored Klein bottle, the only exception to the Heawood conjecture

Franklin proved that the chromatic number of a graph embedded in the Klein bottle can be as large as , but never exceeds . [2] Later it was proved in the works of Gerhard Ringel, J. W. T. Youngs, and other contributors that the complete graph with vertices can be embedded in the surface unless is the Klein bottle. [3] This established that Heawood's bound could not be improved.

For example, the complete graph on vertices can be embedded in the torus as follows:

K7 et tore.svg

The case of the sphere is the four-color conjecture, which was settled by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken in 1976. [4] [5]

Notes

This article incorporates material from Heawood number on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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References

  1. P. J. Heawood (1890), "Map colouring theorems", Quarterly J. Math., 24: 322–339
  2. P. Franklin (1934), "A six color problem", Journal of Mathematics and Physics, 13 (1–4): 363–379, doi:10.1002/sapm1934131363
  3. Gerhard Ringel; J. W. T. Youngs (1968), "Solution of the Heawood Map-Coloring Problem", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 60 (2): 438–445, Bibcode:1968PNAS...60..438R, doi: 10.1073/pnas.60.2.438 , ISSN   0027-8424, PMC   225066 , PMID   16591648
  4. Kenneth Appel; Wolfgang Haken (1977), "Every Planar Map is Four Colorable. I. Discharging", Illinois Journal of Mathematics, 21 (3): 429–490, MR   0543792
  5. Kenneth Appel; Wolfgang Haken; John Koch (1977), "Every Planar Map is Four Colorable. II. Reducibility", Illinois Journal of Mathematics, 21 (3): 491–567, doi: 10.1215/ijm/1256049012 , MR   0543793