Defective acyclic colorings of planar graphs

Abstract

This paper studies two variants of defective acyclic coloring of planar graphs. For a graph $G$ and a coloring $\varphi$ of $G$, a 2CC transversal is a subset $E'$ of $E(G)$ that intersects every 2-colored cycle. Let $k$ be a positive integer. We denote by $m_k(G)$ the minimum integer $m$ such that $G$ has a proper $k$-coloring which has a 2CC transerval of size $m$, and by $m'_k(G)$ the minimum size of a subset $E'$ of $E(G)$ such that $G-E'$ is acyclic $k$-colorable. We prove that for any $n$-vertex $3$-colorable planar graph $G$, $m_3(G) \le n - 3$ and for any planar graph $G$, $m_4(G) \le n - 5$ provided that $n \ge 5$. We show that these upper bounds are sharp: there are infinitely many planar graphs attaining these upper bounds. Moreover, the minimum 2CC transversal $E'$ can be chosen in such a way that $E'$ induces a forest. We also prove that for any planar graph $G$, $m'_3(G) \le (13n - 42) / 10$ and $m'_4(G) \le (3n - 12) / 5$.