Precoloring extension. I. Interval graphs

AbstractThis paper is the first article in a series devoted to the study of the following general problem on vertex colorings of graphs. Suppose that some vertices of a graph G are assigned to some colors. Can this ‘precoloring’ be extended to a proper coloring of G with at most k colors (for some given k)? This question was motivated by practical problems in scheduling and VLSI theory. Here we investigate its complexity status for interval graphs and for graphs with a bounded treewidth