The Erdős-Faber-Lovász conjecture for dense hypergraphs (Q2470471)

The degree of a vertex \(v\) of a hypergraph \(H\) is the number of edges of \(H\) containing \(v\). A hypergraph is called dense if the minimum degree of \(H\) is greater than \(\sqrt{n}\). A hypergraph is linear if no two edges intersect in more than one vertex. A proper \(k\)-vertex colouring of \(H\) is an assignment of colours \(1,2,\dots,k\) to the vertices of \(H\) in such a way that in every edge all vertices have distinct colours. The vertex chromatic number \(\chi(H)\) of \(H\) is the smallest \(k\) such that there is a \(k\)-vertex colouring of \(H\). Erdős, Faber and Lovász formulated conjecture that if a linear hypergraph has \(n\) edges, each of size \(n\), then its chromatic number is \(n\). The paper provides a proof of the conjecture in the special case when the hypergraph obtained from the original one by deleting the vertices of degree one is dense.