Variable degeneracy of graphs with restricted structures

Abstract: Bernshteyn and Lee defined a new notion, weak degeneracy, which is slightly weaker than the ordinary degeneracy. It is proved that strictly $f$-degenerate transversal is a common generalization of list coloring, $L$-forested-coloring and DP-coloring. In this paper, we consider three classes of graphs, including planar graphs without any configuration in Fig. 2, toroidal graphs without any configuration in Fig. 5, and planar graphs without intersecting $5$-cycles. We give structural results for each class of graphs, and prove each structure is reducible for weakly $3$-degenerate and the existence of strictly $f$-degenerate transversals. As consequences, these three classes of graphs are weakly $3$-degenerate, and have a strictly $f$-degenerate transversal. Then these three classes of graph have DP-paint number at most four, and have list vertex arboricity at most two. This greatly improve all the results in [2-4, 11-13, 16-18, 22, 25, 32, 34]. Furthermore, the first and the third classes of graphs have Alon-Tarsi number at most four.