Asymptotics of the chromatic number for quasi-line graphs

Abstract

As proved by Kahn, the chromatic number and fractional chromatic number of a line graph agree asymptotically. That is, for any line graph $G$ we have $\chi (G)\le (1+o(1)){\chi }_f(G)$. We extend this result to quasi-line graphs, an important subclass of claw-free graphs. Furthermore we prove that we can construct a colouring that achieves this bound in polynomial time, giving us an asymptotic approximation algorithm for the chromatic number of quasi-line graphs.

20 pages, 2 figures