A list version of graph packing

Abstract

We consider the following generalization of graph packing. Let $G_{1} = (V_{1}, E_{1})$ and $G_{2} = (V_{2}, E_{2})$ be graphs of order $n$ and $G_{3} = (V_{1} \cup V_{2}, E_{3})$ a bipartite graph. A bijection $f$ from $V_{1}$ onto $V_{2}$ is a list packing of the triple $(G_{1}, G_{2}, G_{3})$ if $uv \in E_{2}$ implies $f(u)f(v) \notin E_{2}$ and $vf(v) \notin E_{3}$ for all $v \in V_{1}$. We extend the classical results of Sauer and Spencer and Bollob\'{a}s and Eldridge on packing of graphs with small sizes or maximum degrees to the setting of list packing. In particular, we extend the well-known Bollob\'{a}s--Eldridge Theorem, proving that if $\Delta (G_{1}) \leq n-2, \Delta(G_{2}) \leq n-2, \Delta(G_{3}) \leq n-1$, and $|E_1| + |E_2| + |E_3| \leq 2n-3$, then either $(G_{1}, G_{2}, G_{3})$ packs or is one of 7 possible exceptions. Hopefully, the concept of list packing will help to solve some problems on ordinary graph packing, as the concept of list coloring did for ordinary coloring.