On Sparsity Conditions Guaranteeing a Fractional Coloring

Abstract

A graph has an ‐coloring if there exists an assignment from the vertices to subsets of with size such that adjacent vertices are assigned disjoint subsets. Odd girth at least is a necessary condition for a graph to have a ‐coloring. Chen and Raspaud conjectured a tight upper bound on the maximum average degree of a graph with odd girth at least that guarantees a ‐coloring. Namely, they conjectured that every graph with odd girth at least and maximum average degree less than has a ‐coloring. This conjecture is true for ; when , computers were used to perform case analysis. The main result of this paper confirms the conjecture for the next open case () without the use of computers. Moreover, our approach yields simpler, computer‐free proofs for previously known cases ().