Colouring of plane graphs with unique maximal colours on faces

Abstract

The Four Colour Theorem asserts that the vertices of every plane graph can be properly coloured with four colors. Fabrici and G\"oring conjectured the following stronger statement to also hold: the vertices of every plane graph can be properly coloured with the numbers 1,...,4 in such a way that every face contains a unique vertex coloured with the maximal color appearing on that face. They proved that every plane graph has such a colouring with the numbers 1,...,6. We prove that every plane graph has such a colouring with the numbers 1,...,5 and we also prove the list variant of the statement for lists of sizes seven.