Colouring Eulerian triangulations (Q1850587)

The representativeness of an imbedding of a graph into a surface is the minimum number of times a non-null-homotopic closed curve in the surface must intersect the image of the graph in the surface. \textit{K. L. Collins} and \textit{J. P. Hutchinson} [Graph colouring and applications (P. Hansen and O. Marcotte, eds.), CRM Proc. Lect. Notes 23, 21-34 (1999; Zbl 0944.05044)] conjectured that every Eulerian triangulation of an orientable surface is 4-colourable if its representativeness is sufficiently high. The present authors show that for every orientable surface \(S\) there is a number \(c\) so that every Eulerian triangulation of \(S\) with representativeness at least \(c\) is 4-colourable.