Graph Colouring and the Probabilistic Method [Hardcover]

Over the past decade, many major advances have been made in the field of graph coloring via the probabilistic method. This monograph, by two of the best on the topic, provides an accessible and unified treatment of these results, using tools such as the Lovasz Local Lemma and Talagrand's concentration inequality.

Over the past decade, many major advances have been made in the field of graph colouring via the probabilistic method. This monograph provides an accessible and unified treatment of these results, using tools such as the Lovasz Local Lemma and Talagrand's concentration inequality.
The topics covered include: Kahn's proofs that the Goldberg-Seymour and List Colouring Conjectures hold asymptotically; a proof that for some absolute constant C, every graph of maximum degree Delta has a Delta+C total colouring; Johansson's proof that a triangle free graph has a O(Delta over log Delta) colouring; algorithmic variants of the Local Lemma which permit the efficient construction of many optimal and near-optimal colourings.
This begins with a gentle introduction to the probabilistic method and will be useful to researchers and graduate students in graph theory, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science and probability.1. Colouring Preliminaries.- 2. Probabilistic Preliminaries.- 3. The First Moment Method.- 4. The Lov?sz Local Lemma.- 5. The Chernoff Bound.- 6. Hadwigers Conjecture.- 7. A First Glimpse of Total Colouring.- 8. The Strong Chromatic Number.- 9. Total Colouring Revisited.- 10. Talagrands Inequality and Colouring Sparse Graphs.- 11. Azumas Inequality and a Strengthening of Brooks Theorem.- 12. Graphs with Girth at Least Five.- 13. Triangle-Free Graphs.- 14. The List Colouring Conjecture.- 15. The Structural Decomposition.- 16. ?, ? and ?.- 17. Near Optimal Total Colouring I: Sparse Graphs.- 18. Near Optimal Total Colouring II: General Graphs.- 19. Generalizations of the Local Lemma.- 20. A Closer Look at Talló.