Acyclic colourings of graphs with obstructions

Abstract: Given a graph $G$, a colouring of $G$ is acyclic if it is a proper colouring of $G$ and every cycle contains at least three colours. Its acyclic chromatic number $\chi_a(G)$ is the minimum $k$ such that there exists a proper $k$-colouring of $G$ with no bicoloured cycle. In general, when $G$ has maximum degree $\Delta$, it is known that $\chi_a(G) = O(\Delta^{4/3})$ as $\Delta \to \infty$. We study the effect on this bound of further requiring that $G$ does not contain some fixed subgraph $F$ on $t$ vertices. We establish that the bound is constant if $F$ is a subdivided tree, $O(t^{8/3}\Delta^{2/3})$ if $F$ is a forest, $O(\sqrt{t}\Delta)$ if $F$ is bipartite and 1-acyclic, $2\Delta + o(\Delta)$ if $F$ is an even cycle of length at least $6$, and $O(t^{1/4}\Delta^{5/4})$ if $F=K_{3,t}$.