# Rémi de Joannis de Verclos

PhD Student at G-SCOP, Grenoble, France.

Rémi de Joannis de Verclos
Laboratoire G-SCOP, bureau B521
46 avenue Félix Viallet
38031 Grenoble Cedex 1
France

Tel: +33 (0) 4 56 52 98 22
E-mail: remi.de-joannis-de-verclos@grenoble-inp.fr

I am a PhD student under the direction of Louis Esperet and Jean-Sébastien Sereni.

## Publications

• ### Exact distance coloring in trees

with Nicolas Bousquet, Louis Esperet and Ararat Harutyunyan.
arXiv:1703.06047.

For an integer $q\geq2$ and an even integer $d$, consider the graph obtained from a large complete $q$-ary tree by connecting with an edge any two vertices at distance exactly $d$ in the tree. This graph has clique number $q+1$, and the purpose of this short note is to prove that its chromatic number is $\Theta(d\log q/\log d)$. It was not known that the chromatic number of this graph grows with $d$. As a simple corollary of our result, we give a negative answer to a problem of van den Heuvel and Naserasr, asking whether there is a constant $C$ such that for any odd integer d, any planar graph can be colored with at most $C$ colors such that any pair of vertices at distance exactly $d$ have distinct colors. Finally, we study interval coloring of trees (where vertices at distance at least $d$ and at most $cd$, for some real $c>1$, must be assigned distinct colors), giving a sharp upper bound in the case of bounded degree trees.

• ### Equitable Colorings of $K_4$-minor-free Graphs

with Jean-Sébastien Sereni.
arXiv:1703.02250. Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications (2017).

We demonstrate that for every positive integer $\Delta$, every $K_4$-minor-free graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ admits an equitable coloring with $k$ colors where $k \ge (\Delta+3)/2$. This bound is tight and confirms a conjecture by Zhang and Whu. We do not use the discharging method but rather exploit decomposition trees of $K_4$-minor-free graphs.

• ### Additive bases and flows in graphs

with Louis Esperet, Tien-Nam Le and Stéphan Thomassé.
arXiv:1701.03366. An extended abstract appeared in EuroComb 2017.

It was conjectured by Jaeger, Linial, Payan, and Tarsi in 1992 that for any prime number $p$, there is a constant $c$ such that for any $n$, the union (with repetition) of the vectors of any family of $c$ linear bases of $\mathbb{Z}_p^n$ forms an additive basis of $\mathbb{Z}_p^n$ (i.e. any element of $\mathbb{Z}_p^n$ can be expressed as the sum of a subset of these vectors). In this note, we prove this conjecture when each vector contains at most two non-zero entries. As an application, we prove several results on flows in highly edge-connected graphs, extending known results. For instance, assume that $p\ge 3$ is a prime number and $\vec{G}$ is a directed, highly edge-connected graph in which each arc is given a list of two distinct values in $\mathbb{Z}_p$. Then $\vec{G}$ has a $\mathbb{Z}_p$-flow in which each arc is assigned a value of its own list.

• ### Colouring squares of claw-free graphs

with Ross J. Kang and Lucas Pastor
arXiv:1609.08645. Canadian Journal of Mathematics (2017).

Is there some absolute $\varepsilon > 0$ such that for any claw-free graph $G$, the chromatic number of the square of $G$ satisfies $\chi(G^2) \le (2-\varepsilon) \omega(G)^2$, where $\omega(G)$ is the clique number of $G$? Erdős and Nešetřil asked this question for the specific case of $G$ the line graph of a simple graph and this was answered in the affirmative by Molloy and Reed. We show that the answer to the more general question is also yes, and moreover that it essentially reduces to the original question of Erdős and Nešetřil.

• ### Limits of order-types

with Xavier Goaoc, Alfredo Hubard, Jean-Sébastien Sereni and Jan Volec .
31st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (2015).

The notion of limits of dense graphs was invented, among other reasons, to attack problems in extremal graph theory. It is straightforward to define limits of order types in analogy with limits of graphs, and this paper examines how to adapt to this setting two approaches developed to study limits of dense graphs. We first consider flag algebras, which were used to open various questions on graphs to mechanical solving via semidefinite programming. We define flag algebras of order types, and use them to obtain, via the semidefinite method, new lower bounds on the density of 5- or 6-tuples in convex position in arbitrary point sets, as well as some inequalities expressing the difficulty of sampling order types uniformly. We next consider graphons, a representation of limits of dense graphs that enable their study by continuous probabilistic or analytic methods. We investigate how planar measures fare as a candidate analogue of graphons for limits of order types. We show that the map sending a measure to its associated limit is continuous and, if restricted to uniform measures on compact convex sets, a homeomorphism. We prove, however, that this map is not surjective. Finally, we examine a limit of order types similar to classical constructions in combinatorial geometry (Erdos-Szekeres, Horton...) and show that it cannot be represented by any somewhere regular measure; we analyze this example via an analogue of Sylvester's problem on the probability that k random points are in convex position.

• ### On Fixed-Polynomial Size Circuit Lower Bounds for Uniform Polynomials in the Sense of Valiant

with Hervé Fournier and Sylvain Périfel.
arXiv:1304.5910. Information and Computation (2015).

Assuming the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis (GRH), we show that for all k, there exist polynomials with coefficients in $MA$ having no arithmetic circuits of size $O(n^k)$ over the complex field (allowing any complex constant). We also build a family of polynomials that can be evaluated in AM having no arithmetic circuits of size $O(n^k)$. Then we investigate the link between fixed-polynomial size circuit bounds in the Boolean and arithmetic settings. In characteristic zero, it is proved that $NP \not\subset size(n^k)$, or $MA \subset size(n^k)$, or $NP=MA$ imply lower bounds on the circuit size of uniform polynomials in n variables from the class $VNP$ over the complex field, assuming GRH. In positive characteristic p, uniform polynomials in VNP have circuits of fixed-polynomial size if and only if both $VP=VNP$ over $\mathbb{F}_p$ and $Mod_pP$ has circuits of fixed-polynomial size.

• ### The worst case behavior of randomized gossip protocols

with Hervé Baumann, Pierre Fraignaud and Hovahnes Harutyunyan.
Theorical Computer Science (2014).

This paper considers the quasi-random rumor spreading model introduced by Doerr, Friedrich, and Sauerwald, hereafter referred to as the \em{list-based model}. Each node is provided with a cyclic list of all its neighbors, and, upon reception of a message, it chooses a random position in its list, and from then on calls its neighbors in the order of the list. This model is known to perform asymptotically at least as well as the random phone-call model, for many network classes. Motivated by potential applications of the list-based model to live streaming, we are interested in its worst case behavior.
Our first main result is the design of an $O(m+n\log⁡ n)$-time algorithm that, given any n-node m-edge network G, and any source-target pair $s,t\in V(G)$, computes the maximum number of rounds it may take for a rumor to be broadcast from $s$ to $t$ in $G$, in the list-based model. Hence, the list-based model is computationally easy to tackle in its basic version. The situation is radically different when one is considering variants of the model in which nodes are aware of the status of their neighbors, i.e., are aware of whether or not they have already received the rumor, at any point in time. Indeed, our second main result states that, unless P=NP, the worst case behavior of the list-based model with the additional feature that every node is perpetually aware of which of its neighbors have already received the rumor cannot be approximated in polynomial time within a $(\frac{1}{n})^{\frac{1}{2}-\epsilon}$ multiplicative factor, for any $\epsilon>0$. As a byproduct of this latter result, we can show that, unless $P=NP$, there are no PTAS enabling to approximate the worst case behavior of the list-based model, whenever every node perpetually keeps track of the subset of its neighbors which have sent the rumor to it so far.

## Teaching

• 2014-2017, Gestion de production, TD et TP. M1 MIAGE, UFR IMA, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble.
• 2014-2017, Modélisation des structures informatiques (Modelisation of computer science structures), L2 Informatique, TD, TP et cours magistraux à l'Université Joseph Fourier, à Grenoble.