Proportional 2-Choosability with a Bounded Palette

Proportional choosability is a list coloring analogue of equitable coloring. Specifically, a $k$-assignment $L$ for a graph $G$ specifies a list $L(v)$ of $k$ available colors to each $v \in V(G)$. An $L$-coloring assigns a color to each vertex $v$ from its list $L(v)$. A proportional $L$-coloring of $G$ is a proper $L$-coloring in which each color $c \in \bigcup_{v \in V(G)} L(v)$ is used $\lfloor η(c)/k \rfloor$ or $\lceil η(c)/k \rceil$ times where $η(c)=\left\lvert{\{v \in V(G) : c \in L(v) \}}\right\rvert$. A graph $G$ is proportionally $k$-choosable if a proportional $L$-coloring of $G$ exists whenever $L$ is a $k$-assignment for $G$. Motivated by earlier work, we initiate the study of proportional choosability with a bounded palette by studying proportional 2-choosability with a bounded palette. In particular, when $\ell \geq 2$, a graph $G$ is said to be proportionally $(2, \ell)$-choosable if a proportional $L$-coloring of $G$ exists whenever $L$ is a $2$-assignment for $G$ satisfying $|\bigcup_{v \in V(G)} L(v)| \leq \ell$. We observe that a graph is proportionally $(2,2)$-choosable if and only if it is equitably 2-colorable. As $\ell$ gets larger, the set of proportionally $(2, \ell)$-choosable graphs gets smaller. We show that whenever $\ell \geq 5$ a graph is proportionally $(2, \ell)$-choosable if and only if it is proportionally 2-choosable. We also completely characterize the connected proportionally $(2, \ell)$-choosable graphs when $\ell = 3,4$.

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