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A Short Proof of the Hajnal–Szemerédi Theorem on Equitable Colouring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

H. A. KIERSTEAD
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA (e-mail: kierstead@asu.edu)
A. V. KOSTOCHKA
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA and Institute of Mathematics, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia (e-mail: kostochk@math.uiuc.edu)

Abstract

A proper vertex colouring of a graph is equitable if the sizes of colour classes differ by at most one. We present a new shorter proof of the celebrated Hajnal–Szemerédi theorem: for every positive integer r, every graph with maximum degree at most r has an equitable colouring with r+1 colours. The proof yields a polynomial time algorithm for such colourings.

Type
Paper
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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