5-Coloring Planar Graphs with a Color Class of Order at Most $|V|/6$

Abstract

We show that any planar graph $G=(V,E)$ has a 5-coloring such that one color class contains at most $|V|/6$ vertices. In other words, there exists a partition of $V$ into five independent sets $\{V_1, \cdots, V_5\}$ such that $|V_5| \leq |V| / 6$. Our proof yields an $O(|V|^2)$-time algorithm to find such a partition, and unlike the Four Color Theorem, our proof is fully verifiable without computer assistance.