Two lower bounds for $p$-centered colorings

Abstract

Given a graph $G$ and an integer $p$, a coloring $f : V(G) \to \mathbb{N}$ is \emph{$p$-centered} if for every connected subgraph $H$ of $G$, either $f$ uses more than $p$ colors on $H$ or there is a color that appears exactly once in $H$. The notion of $p$-centered colorings plays a central role in the theory of sparse graphs. In this note we show two lower bounds on the number of colors required in a $p$-centered coloring. First, we consider monotone classes of graphs whose shallow minors have average degree bounded polynomially in the radius, or equivalently (by a result of Dvořák and Norin), admitting strongly sublinear separators. We construct such a class such that $p$-centered colorings require a number of colors super-polynomial in $p$. This is in contrast with a recent result of Pilipczuk and Siebertz, who established a polynomial upper bound in the special case of graphs excluding a fixed minor. Second, we consider graphs of maximum degree $Δ$. Dębski, Felsner, Micek, and Schröder recently proved that these graphs have $p$-centered colorings with $O(Δ^{2-1/p} p)$ colors. We show that there are graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ that require $Ω(Δ^{2-1/p} p \ln^{-1/p}Δ)$ colors in any $p$-centered coloring, thus matching their upper bound up to a logarithmic factor.