Fixing improper colorings of graphs

Abstract: In this paper we consider a variation of a recoloring problem, called the Color-Fixing. Let us have some non-proper $r$-coloring $\varphi$ of a graph $G$. We investigate the problem of finding a proper $r$-coloring of $G$, which is "the most similar" to $\varphi$, i.e. the number $k$ of vertices that have to be recolored is minimum possible. We observe that the problem is NP-complete for any $r \geq 3$, even for bipartite planar graphs. On the other hand, the problem is fixed-parameter tractable, when parameterized by the number of allowed transformations $k$. We provide an $2^n \cdot n^{\mathcal{O}(1)}$ algorithm for the problem (for any fixed $r$) and a linear algorithm for graphs with bounded treewidth. We also show several lower complexity bounds, using standard complexity assumptions. Finally, we investigate the {\em fixing number} of a graph $G$. It is the maximum possible distance (in the number of transformations) between some non-proper coloring of $G$ and a proper one.