A Survey on the Computational Complexity of Colouring Graphs with Forbidden Subgraphs

Abstract: For a positive integer $k$, a $k$-colouring of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a mapping $c: V\rightarrow{1,2,...,k}$ such that $c(u)\neq c(v)$ whenever $uv\in E$. The Colouring problem is to decide, for a given $G$ and $k$, whether a $k$-colouring of $G$ exists. If $k$ is fixed (that is, it is not part of the input), we have the decision problem $k$-Colouring instead. We survey known results on the computational complexity of Colouring and $k$-Colouring for graph classes that are characterized by one or two forbidden induced subgraphs. We also consider a number of variants: for example, where the problem is to extend a partial colouring, or where lists of permissible colours are given for each vertex.