Chip games and multipartite graph paintability

Abstract

We study the paintability, an on-line version of choosability, of complete multipartite graphs. We do this by considering an equivalent chip game introduced by Duraj, Gutowski, and Kozik. We consider complete multipartite graphs with $ n $ parts of size at most 3. Using a computational approach, we establish upper bounds on the paintability of such graphs for small values of $ n. $ The choosability of complete multipartite graphs is closely related to value $ p(n, m) $, the minimum number of edges in a $n$-uniform hypergraph with no panchromatic $m$-coloring. We consider an online variant of this parameter $ p_{OL}(n, m), $ introduced by Khuzieva et al. using a symmetric chip game. With this symmetric chip game, we find an improved upper bound for $ p_{OL}(n, m)$ when $m \geq 3$ and $n$ is large. Our method also implies a lower bound on the paintability of complete multipartite graphs with $m \geq 3$ parts of equal size.