10-list recoloring of planar graphs

Abstract

Fix a planar graph $G$ and a list assignment $L$ with $\left|L\left(v\right)\right|=10$ for all $v\in V\left(G\right)$. Let $\alpha$ and $\beta$ be $L$-colorings of $G$. A recoloring sequence from $\alpha$ to $\beta$ is a sequence of $L$-colorings, beginning with $\alpha$ and ending with $\beta$, such that each successive pair in the sequence differs in the color on a single vertex of $G$. We show that there exists a constant $C$ such that for all choices of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ there exists a recoloring sequence $\sigma$ from $\alpha$ to $\beta$ that recolors each vertex at most $C$ times. In particular, $\sigma$ has length at most $C\left|V\left(G\right)\right|$. This confirms a conjecture of Dvořák and Feghali. For our proof, we introduce a new technique for quickly showing that many configurations are reducible. We believe this method may be of independent interest and will have application to other problems in this area.