Fast Distributed Coloring Algorithms for Triangle-Free Graphs

Vertex coloring is a central concept in graph theory and an important symmetry-breaking primitive in distributed computing. Whereas degree-Delta graphs may require palettes of Delta+1 colors in the worst case, it is well known that the chromatic number of many natural graph classes can be much smaller. In this paper we give new distributed algorithms to find (Delta/k)-coloring in graphs of girth 4 (triangle-free graphs), girth 5, and trees, where k is at most (1/4 - o(1)) ln Delta in triangle-free graphs and at most (1 - o(1)) ln Delta in girth-5 graphs and trees, and o(1) is a function of Delta. Specifically, for Delta sufficiently large we can find such a coloring in O(k + log* n) time. Moreover, for any Delta we can compute such colorings in roughly logarithmic time for triangle-free and girth5 graphs, and in O(log Delta + log(Delta) log n) time on trees. As a byproduct, our algorithm shows that the chromatic number of triangle-free graphs is at most (4 + o(1)) Delta/ln Delta, which improves on Jamall's recent bound of (67 vertical bar o(1)) Delta/ln Delta. Also, we show that (Delta vertical bar 1)-coloring for triangle-free graphs can be obtained in sublogarithmic time for any Delta.