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Abstract

Many graph problems are locally checkable: a solution is globally feasible if
it looks valid in all constant-radius neighborhoods. This idea is formalized in
the concept of locally checkable labelings (LCLs), introduced by Naor and
Stockmeyer (1995). Recently, Chang et al. (2016) showed that in bounded-degree
graphs, every LCL problem belongs to one of the following classes:
- "Easy": solvable in $O(\log^* n)$ rounds with both deterministic and
randomized distributed algorithms.
- "Hard": requires at least $\Omega(\log n)$ rounds with deterministic and
$\Omega(\log \log n)$ rounds with randomized distributed algorithms.
Hence for any parameterized LCL problem, when we move from local problems
towards global problems, there is some point at which complexity suddenly jumps
from easy to hard. For example, for vertex coloring in $d$-regular graphs it is
now known that this jump is at precisely $d$ colors: coloring with $d+1$ colors
is easy, while coloring with $d$ colors is hard.
However, it is currently poorly understood where this jump takes place when
one looks at defective colorings. To study this question, we define $k$-partial
$c$-coloring as follows: nodes are labeled with numbers between $1$ and $c$,
and every node is incident to at least $k$ properly colored edges.
It is known that $1$-partial $2$-coloring (a.k.a. weak $2$-coloring) is easy
for any $d \ge 1$. As our main result, we show that $k$-partial $2$-coloring
becomes hard as soon as $k \ge 2$, no matter how large a $d$ we have.
We also show that this is fundamentally different from $k$-partial
$3$-coloring: no matter which $k \ge 3$ we choose, the problem is always hard
for $d = k$ but it becomes easy when $d \gg k$. The same was known previously
for partial $c$-coloring with $c \ge 4$, but the case of $c < 4$ was open.