On Coloring Random Subgraphs of a Fixed Graph

Abstract: Given an arbitrary graph $G$ we study the chromatic number of a random subgraph $G_{1/2}$ obtained from $G$ by removing each edge independently with probability $1/2$. Studying $\chi(G_{1/2})$ has been suggested by Bukh~\cite{Bukh}, who asked whether $$\mathbb{E}[\chi(G_{1/2})] \geq \Omega( \chi(G)/\log(\chi(G)))$$ holds for all graphs $G$. In this paper we show that for any graph $G$ with chromatic number $k = \chi(G)$ and for all $d \leq k^{1/3}$ it holds that $$\Pr[\chi(G_{1/2}) \leq d] < \exp \left(- \Omega\left(\frac{k(k-d^3)}{d^3}\right)\right)$$. In particular, $$\Pr[G_{1/2} \text{ is bipartite}] < \exp \left(- \Omega \left(k^2 \right)\right)$$. The later bound is tight up to a constant in $\Omega(\cdot)$, and is attained when $G$ is the complete graph on $k$ vertices. As a technical lemma, that may be of independent interest, we prove that if in \emph{any} $d^3$ coloring of the vertices of $G$ there are at least $t$ monochromatic edges, then $$\Pr[\chi(G_{1/2}) \leq d] < e^{- \Omega\left(t\right)}$$. We also prove that for any graph $G$ with chromatic number $k = \chi(G)$ and independence number $\alpha(G) \leq O(n/k)$ it holds that $$\mathbb{E}[\chi(G_{1/2})] \geq \Omega \left( k/\log(k) \right)$$. This gives a positive answer to the question of Bukh for a large family of graphs.