New methods to color the vertices of a graph

Abstract

This paper describes efficient new heuristic methods to color the vertices of a graph which rely upon the comparison of the degrees and structure of a graph. A method is developed which is exact for bipartite graphs and is an important part of heuristic procedures to find maximal cliques in general graphs. Finally an exact method is given which performs better than the Randall-Brown algorithm and is able to color larger graphs, and the new heuristic methods, the classical methods, and the exact method are compared.