An odd coloring of a graph G is a proper vertex coloring where, for every vertex v ∈ V (G), there is a color that appears an odd number of times in NG(v). The smallest k for which G admits an odd coloring is the (proper) odd chromatic number and it is denoted χo(G). This coloring was introduced in 2022, and it was conjectured that χo(G) ≤ 5 for every planar graph G, while the best known upper bound is χo(G) ≤ 8. It is also known that any graph G satisfies χo(G) ≤ ⌊3∆(G)/2⌋+2. This paper shows that every planar graph G with ∆(G) ≤ 4 has χo(G) ≤ 7.
Carvalho et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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