\(b\)-Coloring is NP-hard on Co-bipartite Graphs and Polytime Solvable on Tree-Cographs
A b-coloring of a graph is a proper coloring such that every color class contains a vertex that is adjacent to all other color classes. The b-chromatic number of a graph \(G\), denoted by \(\chi _b(G)\), is the maximum number \(t\) such that \(G\) admits a b-coloring with \(t\) colors. A graph\(G\) is called b-continuous if it admits a b-coloring with \(t\) colors, for every \(t = \chi (G),\ldots ,\chi _b(G)\), and b-monotonic if \(\chi _b(H_1) \ge \chi _b(H_2)\) for every induced subgraph \(H_1\) of \(G\), and every induced subgraph \(H_2\) of \(H_1\). We investigate the b-chromatic number of graphs with stability number two. These are exactly the complements of triangle-free graphs, thus including all complements of bipartite graphs. The main results of this work are the following: (1) We characterize the b-colorings of a graph with stability number two in terms of matchings with no augmenting paths of length one or three. We derive that graphs with stability number two are b-continuous and b-monotonic. (2) We prove that it is NP-complete to decide whether the b-chromatic number of co-bipartite graph is at least a given threshold. (3) We describe a polynomial time dynamic programming algorithm to compute the b-chromatic number of co-trees. (4) Extending several previous results, we show that there is a polynomial time dynamic programming algorithm for computing the b-chromatic number of tree-cographs. Moreover, we show that tree-cographs are b-continuous and b-monotonic.
np-hardness b-coloring stability number two co-triangle-free graphs treecographs polytime dynamic programming algorithms