On Equivalent Color Transform and Four Coloring Theorem

Abstract

In this paper, we apply an equivalent color transform (ECT) for a minimal $k$-coloring of any graph $G$. It contracts each color class of the graph to a single vertex and produces a complete graph $K_k$ for $G$ by removing redundant edges between any two vertices. Based on ECT, a simple proof for four color theorem for planar graph is then proposed.