The chromatic number of $G$-stable Kneser graphs

Abstract

Extending the notions of Kneser graphs and Schrijver graphs, we define the $G$-stable Kneser graph $KG(G,k)$ (where $k\geq 2$ and $G$ is a graph on $n\geq 2k$ vertices) as the graph whose vertices are the $k$-element independent sets in $G$ and whose edges join pairs of disjoint independent sets. The well-known result of Lovász on the chromatic number of Kneser graphs implies that $χ(KG(G,k)) \leq n-2k+2$ for any $G$. We call $G$ $k$-tight if equality holds, and we study the following question: Which graphs are $k$-tight? A result of Daneshpajouh et al.\ implies a characterization of $2$-tight graphs. We prove a necessary condition for a graph to be $k$-tight for $k\geq 3$ which extends this characterization, and we conjecture it to be sufficient. Another result gives a lower bound to the chromatic number of the $G$-stable Kneser graphs when $G$ is a disjoint union of cycles. We use this result to give a short proof of the fact that $4$-regular graphs on $3k$ vertices consisting of two vertex-disjoint cycles and $k$ cycles of length $3$ admit an independent set of size $k$.