# Thue number

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In the mathematical area of graph theory, the Thue number of a graph is a variation of the chromatic index, defined by Alon et al. (2002) and named after mathematician Axel Thue, who studied the squarefree words used to define this number.

Mathematics includes the study of such topics as quantity, structure, space, and change.

In mathematics, graph theory is the study of graphs, which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of vertices, nodes, or points which are connected by edges, arcs, or lines. A graph may be undirected, meaning that there is no distinction between the two vertices associated with each edge, or its edges may be directed from one vertex to another; see Graph for more detailed definitions and for other variations in the types of graph that are commonly considered. Graphs are one of the prime objects of study in discrete mathematics.

Axel Thue, was a Norwegian mathematician, known for highly original work in diophantine approximation, and combinatorics.

## Contents

Alon et al. define a nonrepetitive coloring of a graph to be an assignment of colors to the edges of the graph, such that there does not exist any even-length simple path in the graph in which the colors of the edges in the first half of the path form the same sequence as the colors of the edges in the second half of the path. The Thue number of a graph is the minimum number of colors needed in any nonrepetitive coloring.

In graph theory, a path in a graph is a finite or infinite sequence of edges which connect a sequence of vertices which, by most definitions, are all distinct from one another. In a directed graph, a directed path is again a sequence of edges which connect a sequence of vertices, but with the added restriction that the edges all be directed in the same direction.

Variations on this concept involving vertex colorings or more general walks on a graph have been studied by several authors including Barát and Varjú, Barát and Wood (2005), Brešar and Klavžar (2004), and Kündgen and Pelsmajer.

## Example

Consider a pentagon, that is, a cycle of five vertices. If we color the edges with two colors, some two adjacent edges will have the same color x; the path formed by those two edges will have the repetitive color sequence xx. If we color the edges with three colors, one of the three colors will be used only once; the path of four edges formed by the other two colors will either have two consecutive edges or will form the repetitive color sequence xyxy. However, with four colors it is not difficult to avoid all repetitions. Therefore, the Thue number of C5 is four.

In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°.

In graph theory, a cycle graph or circular graph is a graph that consists of a single cycle, or in other words, some number of vertices connected in a closed chain. The cycle graph with n vertices is called Cn. The number of vertices in Cn equals the number of edges, and every vertex has degree 2; that is, every vertex has exactly two edges incident with it.

## Results

Alon et al. use the Lovász local lemma to prove that the Thue number of any graph is at most quadratic in its maximum degree; they provide an example showing that for some graphs this quadratic dependence is necessary. In addition they show that the Thue number of a path of four or more vertices is exactly three, and that the Thue number of any cycle is at most four, and that the Thue number of the Petersen graph is exactly five.

In probability theory, if a large number of events are all independent of one another and each has probability less than 1, then there is a positive probability that none of the events will occur. The Lovász local lemma allows one to relax the independence condition slightly: As long as the events are "mostly" independent from one another and aren't individually too likely, then there will still be a positive probability that none of them occurs. It is most commonly used in the probabilistic method, in particular to give existence proofs.

In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Petersen graph is an undirected graph with 10 vertices and 15 edges. It is a small graph that serves as a useful example and counterexample for many problems in graph theory. The Petersen graph is named after Julius Petersen, who in 1898 constructed it to be the smallest bridgeless cubic graph with no three-edge-coloring.

The known cycles with Thue number four are C5, C7, C9, C10, C14, and C17. Alon et al. conjecture that the Thue number of any larger cycle is three; they verified computationally that the cycles listed above are the only ones of length ≤ 2001 with Thue number four. Currie resolved this in a 2002 paper, showing that all cycles with 18 or more vertices have Thue number 3.

## Computational complexity

Testing whether a coloring has a repetitive path is in NP, so testing whether a coloring is nonrepetitive is in co-NP, and Manin showed that it is co-NP-complete. The problem of finding such a coloring belongs to ${\displaystyle \Sigma _{2}^{P}}$ in the polynomial hierarchy, and again Manin showed that it is complete for this level.

In computational complexity theory, the polynomial hierarchy is a hierarchy of complexity classes that generalize the classes P, NP and co-NP to oracle machines. It is a resource-bounded counterpart to the arithmetical hierarchy and analytical hierarchy from mathematical logic.

## Related Research Articles

In mathematics, the four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that, given any separation of a plane into contiguous regions, producing a figure called a map, no more than four colors are required to color the regions of the map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Adjacent means that two regions share a common boundary curve segment, not merely a corner where three or more regions meet.

In the mathematical field of graph theory, a bipartite graph is a graph whose vertices can be divided into two disjoint and independent sets and such that every edge connects a vertex in to one in . Vertex sets and are usually called the parts of the graph. Equivalently, a bipartite graph is a graph that does not contain any odd-length cycles.

This is a glossary of graph theory terms. Graph theory is the study of graphs, systems of nodes or vertices connected in pairs by edges.

In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a graph subject to certain constraints. In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertices of a graph such that no two adjacent vertices are of the same color; this is called a vertex coloring. Similarly, an edge coloring assigns a color to each edge so that no two adjacent edges are of the same color, and a face coloring of a planar graph assigns a color to each face or region so that no two faces that share a boundary have the same color.

In graph theory, a uniquely colorable graph is a k-chromatic graph that has only one possible (proper) k-coloring up to permutation of the colors.

In graph theory, an edge coloring of a graph is an assignment of "colors" to the edges of the graph so that no two incident edges have the same color. For example, the figure to the right shows an edge coloring of a graph by the colors red, blue, and green. Edge colorings are one of several different types of graph coloring. The edge-coloring problem asks whether it is possible to color the edges of a given graph using at most k different colors, for a given value of k, or with the fewest possible colors. The minimum required number of colors for the edges of a given graph is called the chromatic index of the graph. For example, the edges of the graph in the illustration can be colored by three colors but cannot be colored by two colors, so the graph shown has chromatic index three.

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, list coloring is a type of graph coloring where each vertex can be restricted to a list of allowed colors. It was first studied in the 1970s in independent papers by Vizing and by Erdős, Rubin, and Taylor.

In graph theory, an exact coloring is a (proper) vertex coloring in which every pair of colors appears on exactly one pair of adjacent vertices. That is, it is a partition of the vertices of the graph into disjoint independent sets such that, for each pair of distinct independent sets in the partition, there is exactly one edge with endpoints in each set.

In graph theory, the Grundy number or Grundy chromatic number of an undirected graph is the maximum number of colors that can be used by a greedy coloring strategy that considers the vertices of the graph in sequence and assigns each vertex its first available color, using a vertex ordering chosen to use as many colors as possible. Grundy numbers are named after P. M. Grundy, who studied an analogous concept for directed graphs in 1939. The undirected version was introduced by Christen & Selkow (1979).

In graph theory, Vizing's theorem states that every simple undirected graph may be edge colored using a number of colors that is at most one larger than the maximum degree Δ of the graph. At least Δ colors are always necessary, so the undirected graphs may be partitioned into two classes: "class one" graphs for which Δ colors suffice, and "class two" graphs for which Δ + 1 colors are necessary. The theorem is named for Vadim G. Vizing who published it in 1964.

In the mathematical area of graph theory, a triangle-free graph is an undirected graph in which no three vertices form a triangle of edges. Triangle-free graphs may be equivalently defined as graphs with clique number ≤ 2, graphs with girth ≥ 4, graphs with no induced 3-cycle, or locally independent graphs.

In graph-theoretic mathematics, a star coloring of a graph G is a (proper) vertex coloring in which every path on four vertices uses at least three distinct colors. Equivalently, in a star coloring, the induced subgraphs formed by the vertices of any two colors has connected components that are star graphs. Star coloring has been introduced by Grünbaum (1973). The star chromatic number of G is the least number of colors needed to star color G.

In the study of graph coloring problems in mathematics and computer science, a greedy coloring or sequential coloring is a coloring of the vertices of a graph formed by a greedy algorithm that considers the vertices of the graph in sequence and assigns each vertex its first available color. Greedy colorings can be found in linear time, but they do not in general use the minimum number of colors possible.

In graph theory, an area of mathematics, an equitable coloring is an assignment of colors to the vertices of an undirected graph, in such a way that

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, the Hajós construction is an operation on graphs named after György Hajós (1961) that may be used to construct any critical graph or any graph whose chromatic number is at least some given threshold.

In graph theory, the Gallai–Hasse–Roy–Vitaver theorem is a form of duality between the colorings of the vertices of a given undirected graph and the orientations of its edges. It states that the minimum number of colors needed to properly color any graph G equals one plus the length of a longest path in an orientation of G chosen to minimize this path's length. The orientations for which the longest path has minimum length always include at least one acyclic orientation.

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, the kth powerGk of an undirected graph G is another graph that has the same set of vertices, but in which two vertices are adjacent when their distance in G is at most k. Powers of graphs are referred to using terminology similar to that of exponentiation of numbers: G2 is called the square of G, G3 is called the cube of G, etc.

In graph theory, a path in an edge-colored graph is said to be rainbow if no color repeats on it. A graph is said to be rainbow-connected if there is a rainbow path between each pair of its vertices. If there is a rainbow shortest path between each pair of vertices, the graph is said to be strongly rainbow-connected.

In graph theory, a distinguishing coloring or distinguishing labeling of a graph is an assignment of colors or labels to the vertices of the graph that destroys all of the nontrivial symmetries of the graph. The coloring does not need to be a proper coloring: adjacent vertices are allowed to be given the same color. For the colored graph, there should not exist any one-to-one mapping of the vertices to themselves that preserves both adjacency and coloring. The minimum number of colors in a distinguishing coloring is called the distinguishing number of the graph.

In graph theory, a subfield of mathematics, a well-colored graph is an undirected graph for which greedy coloring uses the same number of colors regardless of the order in which colors are chosen for its vertices. That is, for these graphs, the chromatic number and Grundy number are equal.

## References

Noga Alon is an Israeli mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Princeton University noted for his contributions to combinatorics and theoretical computer science, having authored hundreds of papers.

In computing, a Digital Object Identifier or DOI is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). An implementation of the Handle System, DOIs are in wide use mainly to identify academic, professional, and government information, such as journal articles, research reports and data sets, and official publications though they also have been used to identify other types of information resources, such as commercial videos.

Mathematical Reviews is a journal published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) that contains brief synopses, and in some cases evaluations, of many articles in mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science. The AMS also publishes an associated online bibliographic database called MathSciNet which contains an electronic version of Mathematical Reviews and additionally contains citation information for over 3.5 million items as of 2018.