On the concentration of the chromatic number of random graphs

Abstract

Shamir and Spencer proved in the 1980s that the chromatic number of the binomial random graph G(n,p) is concentrated in an interval of length at most ω\sqrt{n}, and in the 1990s Alon showed that an interval of length ω\sqrt{n}/\log n suffices for constant edge-probabilities p \in (0,1). We prove a similar logarithmic improvement of the Shamir-Spencer concentration results for the sparse case p=p(n) \to 0, and uncover a surprising concentration `jump' of the chromatic number in the very dense case p=p(n) \to 1.

11 pages, 1 figure. Minor edits, to appear in The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics