Tashkinov-Trees: An Annotated Proof

Abstract

Tashkinov-trees have been used as a tool for proving bounds on the chromatic index, and are becoming a fundamental tool for edge-coloring. Was its publication in a language different from English an obstacle for the accessibility of a clean and complete proof of Tashkinov’s fundamental theorem? Tashkinov’s original, Russian paper offers a clear presentation of this theorem and its proof. The theorem itself has been well understood and successfully applied, but the proof is more difficult. It builds a truly amazing recursive machine, where the various cases necessitate a refined and polished analysis to fit into one another with surprising smoothness and accuracy. The difficulties were brilliantly unknotted by the author, deserving repeated attention. The present work is the result of reading, translating, reorganizing, rewriting, completing, shortcutting and annotating Tashkinov’s proof. It is essentially the same proof, with non-negligeable communicational differences though, for instance completing it wherever it occurred to be necessary, and simplifying it whenever it appeared to be possible, at the same time trying to adapt it to the habits and taste of the international graph theory community.