Polynomial bounds for chromatic number. V. Excluding a tree of radius two and a complete multipartite graph

Abstract

The Gyárfás-Sumner conjecture says that for every forest H and every integer k, if G is H-free and does not contain a clique on k vertices then it has bounded chromatic number. (A graph is H-free if it does not contain an induced copy of H.) Kierstead and Penrice proved it for trees of radius at most two, but otherwise the conjecture is known only for a few simple types of forest. More is known if we exclude a complete bipartite subgraph instead of a clique: Rödl showed that, for every forest H, if G is H-free and does not contain $K_{t,t}$ as a subgraph then it has bounded chromatic number. In an earlier paper with Sophie Spirkl, we strengthened Rödl's result, showing that for every forest H, the bound on chromatic number can be taken to be polynomial in t. In this paper, we prove a related strengthening of the Kierstead-Penrice theorem, showing that for every tree H of radius two and integer $d\ge 2$, if G is H-free and does not contain as a subgraph the complete d-partite graph with parts of cardinality t, then its chromatic number is at most polynomial in t.