Defective correspondence coloring of planar graphs

Abstract

Defective coloring (also known as relaxed or improper coloring) is a generalization of proper coloring defined as follows: for $d \in \mathbb{N}$, a coloring of a graph is $d$-defective if every vertex is colored the same as at most $d$ of its neighbors. We investigate defective coloring of planar graphs in the context of correspondence coloring, a generalization of list coloring introduced by Dvo\v{r}\'ak and Postle. First we show there exists a planar graph that is not $3$-defective $3$-correspondable, strengthening a recent result of Cho, Choi, Kim, Park, Shan, and Zhu. Then we construct a planar graph that is $1$-defective $3$-correspondable but not $4$-correspondable, thereby extending a recent result of Ma, Xu, and Zhu from list coloring to correspondence coloring. Finally we show all outerplanar graphs are $3$-defective $2$-correspondence colorable, with 3 defects being best possible.