Neighbor Sum Distinguishing Total Choice Number of Planar Graphs without 6-cycles

Pilsniak and Wozniak put forward the concept of neighbor sum distinguishing(NSD)total coloring and conjectured that any graph with maximum degreeΔadmits an NSD total(Δ+3)-coloring in 2015.In 2016,Qu et al.showed that the list version of the conjecture holds for any planar graph withΔ≥13.In this paper,we prove that any planar graph withΔ≥7 but without 6-cycles satisfies the list version of the conjecture.

Neighbor Distinguishing Total Choice Number of Sparse Graphs via the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz

Let G =（V, E） be a graph and Ф ： V tA E → {1, 2,..., k） be a total-k-coloring of G. Let f（v）（S（v）） denote the sum（set） of the color of vertex v and the colors of the edges incident with v. The total coloring Ф is called neighbor sum distinguishing if （f（u） ≠ f（v）） for each edge uv∈ E（G）. We say that Фis neighbor set distinguishing or adjacent vertex distinguishing if S（u） ≠ S（v） for each edge uv ∈ E（G）. For both problems, we have conjectures that such colorings exist for any graph G if k 〉 △（G） ＋ 3. The maximum average degree of G is the maximum of the average degree of its non-empty subgraphs, which is denoted by mad （G）. In this paper, by using the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz and the discharging method, we prove that these two conjectures hold for sparse graphs in their list versions. More precisely, we prove that every graph G with maximum degree A（G） and maximum average degree mad（G） has ch＇＇∑（G） 〈 △（G） ＋ 3 （where ch＇＇∑（G） is the neighbor sum distinguishing total choice number of G） if there exists a pair （k, m） ∈ {（6, 4）, （5, 18/5）, （4, 16）} such that △（G） 〉 k and mad （G） 〈 m.