Every planar graph without adjacent short cycles is 3-colorable

Abstract

Two cycles are {\em adjacent} if they have an edge in common. Suppose that $G$ is a planar graph, for any two adjacent cycles $C_{1}$ and $C_{2}$, we have $|C_{1}| + |C_{2}| \geq 11$, in particular, when $|C_{1}| = 5$, $|C_{2}| \geq 7$. We show that the graph $G$ is 3-colorable.