ACM logo

The ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics


Volume 7, Article 10, 2002


by

Francine Herrmann

and

Alain Hertz

http://www.jea.acm.org/2002/HerrmannChromatic/

Abstract:

We propose a new exact algorithm for finding the chromatic number of a graph G. The algorithm attempts to determine the smallest possible induced subgraph G' of G which has the same chromatic number as G. Such a subgraph is said critical since all proper induced sub-graphs of G' have a chromatic number strictly smaller than G'. The proposed method is particularly helpful when a k-coloring of a non-critical graph is known, and it has to be proved that no (k-1)-coloring of G exists. Computational experiments on random graphs and on DIMACS benchmark problems demonstrate that the new proposed algorithm can solve larger problems than previous known exact methods.

Keywords: Algorithms, Experimentation, Performance

Categories: G.4 Mathematical Software: Algorithm Design and Analysis

Received
Accepted
Final Revision
Published




Last updated and validated August 11, 2002, by editor@jea.acm.org