Conflict-Free Coloring of Intersection Graphs

Abstract

A conflict-free[Formula: see text]-coloring of a graph [Formula: see text] assigns one of [Formula: see text] different colors to some of the vertices such that, for every vertex [Formula: see text], there is a color that is assigned to exactly one vertex among [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]’s neighbors. Such colorings have applications in wireless networking, robotics, and geometry, and are well studied in graph theory. Here we study the conflict-free coloring of geometric intersection graphs. We demonstrate that the intersection graph of [Formula: see text] geometric objects without fatness properties and size restrictions may have conflict-free chromatic number in [Formula: see text] and in [Formula: see text] for disks or squares of different sizes; it is known for general graphs that the worst case is in [Formula: see text]. For unit-disk intersection graphs, we prove that it is NP-complete to decide the existence of a conflict-free coloring with one color; we also show that six colors always suffice, using an algorithm that colors unit disk graphs of restricted height with two colors. We conjecture that four colors are sufficient, which we prove for unit squares instead of unit disks. For interval graphs, we establish a tight worst-case bound of two.