Pattern periodic coloring of distance graphs (Q1127883)

Suppose \(D\) is a subset of \(Z\). The distance graph \(G(Z, D)\) with distance set \(D\) is the graph with vertex set \(Z\) and two vertices \(x, y\) are adjacent if \(| x-y| \in D\). There were two general coloring methods, the periodic coloring method and the regular coloring method, for coloring the vertices of such distance graphs. This paper introduces a new coloring method, called the pattern periodic coloring method. The advantage of this coloring method is that the smallest period for a pattern periodic coloring is much smaller than that for the periodic coloring. Moreover, the investigation of pattern periodic colorings leads to a considerable improvement on the upper bound for the smallest period of a periodic coloring.