Continuous colouring of closed graphs (Q689587)

The main theorem of the paper says that whenever \(f\) is a fixed-point-free continuous map of a 0-dimensional \(\sigma\)-compact Hausdorff space into itself, then there exist disjoint clopen subsets \(U_0\), \(U_1\), \(U_2\) of \(X\) such that \(U_0 \cup U_1 \cup U_2 = X\) and \(f(U_i) \cap U_i = \emptyset\) for every \(i < 3\). In particular, the extension of \(f\) over the Čech-Stone compactification of \(X\) is a fixed-point-free map. The theorem is a very far generalization of a well-known combinatorial theorem attributed to Erdös and de Bruijn and Katětov; see [the reviewer with \textit{Vermeer}, Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 767, 1-16] for references and further results in this subject. In the paper under review there are also investigated graphs instead of maps. A continuous map \(h : X \to k\), where \(k < \omega\), is called a \(k\)-continuous colouring of a closed graph \(G \subset X \times X \smallsetminus \Delta\) if for every \((x,y) \in G\) there is \(h(x) \neq h(y)\). It is shown that there exists a graph on the Cantor set which is 2-colourable in the usual sense but is not \(k\)-continuously colourable for any \(k < \omega\). Some positive results are obtained for scattered spaces.