Graphs that are Critical for the Packing Chromatic Number

Abstract

Given a graph G, a coloring c: V (G) → {1, ⋯, k} such that c(u) = c(v) = i implies that vertices u and v are at distance greater than i, is called a packing coloring of G. The minimum number of colors in a packing coloring of G is called the packing chromatic number of G, and is denoted by χρ(G). In this paper, we propose the study of χρ-critical graphs, which are the graphs G such that for any proper subgraph H of G, χρ(H)