A note on two conjectures that strengthen the four colour theorem

Abstract

There are two conjectures concerning planar graph colourings that are strengthenings of the four colour theorem. One concerns signed graph colouring and is proposed by M\'{a}\v{c}ajov\'{a}, Raspaud and \v{S}koviera. It asserts that every signed planar graph is $4$-colourable. Another concerns list colouring and is proposed by K\"{u}ndgen and Ramamurthi which asserts that if $L$ is a $2$-list assignment of a planar graph $G$, then there is an $L$-colouring of $G$ such that each colour class induces a bipartite graph. In this note we prove that the first conjecture implies the second one.