Planting Colourings Silently

Abstract

Letk⩾ 3 be a fixed integer and letZk(G) be the number ofk-colourings of the graphG. For certain values of the average degree, the random variableZk(G(n,m)) is known to be concentrated in the sense that$\tfrac{1}{n}(\ln Z_k(G(n,m))-\ln\Erw[Z_k(G(n,m))])$converges to 0 in probability (Achlioptas and Coja-Oghlan,Proc. FOCS 2008). In the present paper we prove a significantly stronger concentration result. Namely, we show that for a wide range of average degrees,$\tfrac{1}{\omega}(\ln Z_k(G(n,m))-\ln\Erw[Z_k(G(n,m))])$converges to 0 in probability foranydiverging function$\omega=\omega(n)\ra\infty$. Forkexceeding a certain constantk0this result covers all average degrees up to the so-calledcondensation phase transitiondk,con, and this is best possible. As an application, we show that the experiment of choosing ak-colouring of the random graphG(n,m) uniformly at random is contiguous with respect to the so-called ‘planted model’.