Acyclic 6-coloring of graphs with maximum degree 5 and small maximum average degree

Abstract

A k-colouring of a graph G is a mapping c from the set of vertices of G to the set {1, . . . , k} of colours such that adjacent vertices receive distinct colours. Such a k-colouring is called acyclic, if for every two distinct colours i and j, the subgraph induced by all the edges linking a vertex coloured with i and a vertex coloured with j is acyclic. In other words, every cycle in G has at least three distinct colours.