Justyna Jaworska

The $k$-Coloring problem on hereditary graph classes has been a deeply researched problem over the last decade. A hereditary graph class is characterized by a (possibly infinite) list of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs. We say that a graph is $(H_1,H_2,\ldots)$-free if it does not contain any of $H_1,H_2,\ldots$ as induced subgraphs. The complexity landscape of the problem remains unclear even when restricting to the case $k=4$ and classes defined by a few forbidden induced subgraphs. While the case of only one forbidden induced subgraph has been completely resolved lately, the complexity when considering two forbidden induced subgraphs still has a couple of unknown cases. In particular, $4$-Coloring on $(P_6,C_3)$-free graphs is polynomial while it is NP-hard on $(P_{22},C_3)$-free graphs. We provide a reduction showing NP-completeness of $4$-Coloring on $(P_t,C_3)$-free graphs for $19\leq t\leq 21$, thus constricting the gap of cases whose complexity remains unknown. Our proof includes a computer search ensuring that the graph family obtained through the reduction is indeed $P_{19}$-free.

For integers $k, \ell \geq 3$, let $\mathrm{ex}(n, \overrightarrow{C_k}, \overrightarrow{C_\ell})$ denote the maximum number of directed cycles of length $k$ in any oriented graph on $n$ vertices which does not contain a directed cycle of length $\ell$. We establish the order of magnitude of $\mathrm{ex}(n, \overrightarrow{C_k}, \overrightarrow{C_\ell})$ for every $k$ and $\ell$ and determine its value up to a lower error term when $k \nmid \ell$ and $\ell$ is large enough. Additionally, we calculate the value of $\mathrm{ex}(n, \overrightarrow{C_k}, \overrightarrow{C_\ell})$ for some other specific pairs $(k, \ell)$ showing that a diverse class of extremal constructions can appear for small values of $\ell$.

In 1991 Gy\H ori, Pach, and Simonovits proved that for any bipartite graph $H$ containing a matching avoiding at most 1 vertex, the maximum number of copies of $H$ in any large enough triangle-free graph is achieved in a balanced complete bipartite graph. In this paper we improve their result by showing that if $H$ is a bipartite graph containing a matching of size $x$ and at most $\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{x-1}$ unmatched vertices, then the maximum number of copies of $H$ in any large enough triangle-free graph is achieved in a complete bipartite graph. We also prove that such a statement cannot hold if the number of unmatched vertices is $Ω(x)$.

A classical Turán problem asks for the maximum possible number of edges in a graph of a given order that does not contain a particular graph $H$ as a subgraph. It is well-known that the chromatic number of $H$ is the graph parameter which describes the asymptotic behavior of this maximum. Here, we consider an analogous problem for oriented graphs, where compressibility plays the role of the chromatic number. Since any oriented graph having a directed cycle is not contained in any transitive tournament, it makes sense to consider only acyclic oriented graphs as forbidden subgraphs. We provide basic properties of the compressibility, show that the compressibility of acyclic oriented graphs with out-degree at most 2 is polynomial with respect to the maximum length of a directed path, and that the same holds for a larger out-degree bound if the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture is true. Additionally, generalizing previous results on powers of paths and arbitrary orientations of cycles, we determine the compressibility of acyclic oriented graphs with a restricted structure.