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Let be a graph. If
and
are two integers, a
-colouring of
is a function
from
to
such that
for each edge
. Given a list assignment
of
, i.e.~a mapping that assigns to every vertex
a set of non-negative integers, an
-colouring of
is a mapping
such that
for every
. A list assignment
is a
-
-list-assignment if
and
for each vertex
. Given such a list assignment
, the graph G is
-
-colourable if there exists a
-
-colouring
, i.e.
is both a
-colouring and an
-colouring. For any real number
, the graph
is
-
-choosable if it is
-
-colourable for every
-
-list-assignment
. Last,
is circularly
-choosable if it is
-
-choosable for any
,
. The circular choosability (or circular list chromatic number or circular choice number) of G is
The problem was first posed in 2003 by Mohar (Problem 4 of link*) who suggested the answer should be between 4 and 5.
Some time later, Havet, Kang, Müller, and Sereni [HKMS] showed that in fact the answer is somewhere between 6 and 8. The upper bound extends a celebrated planar choosability proof due to Thomassen [T]. The lower bound is by way of an elementary, though rather large, construction.
Bibliography
[HKMS] F. Havet, R. J. Kang, T. Müller, and J.-S. Sereni. Circular choosability. J. Graph Theory 61 (2009), no. 4, 241--270.
[T] C. Thomassen. Every planar graph is 5-choosable. J. Combinatorial Theory B 62 (1994) 180--181
* indicates original appearance(s) of problem.