Pattern hypergraphs (Q2380447)

Summary: The notion of pattern hypergraph provides a unified view of several previously studied coloring concepts. A pattern hypergraph \(H\) is a hypergraph where each edge is assigned a type \(\Pi_i\) that determines which of possible colorings of the edge are proper. A vertex coloring of \(H\) is proper if it is proper for every edge. In general, the set of integers \(k\) such that \(H\) can be properly colored with exactly \(k\) colors need not be an interval. We find a simple sufficient and necessary condition on the edge types \(\Pi_1, \cdots , \Pi_{\lambda}\) for the existence of a pattern hypergraph \(H\) with edges of types \(\Pi_1,\cdots, \Pi_{\lambda}\) such that the numbers of colors in proper colorings of \(H\) do not form an interval of integers.