Equitable Coloring of Graphs. Recent Theoretical Results and New Practical Algorithms

In many applications in sequencing and scheduling it is desirable to have an underlaying graph as equitably colored as possible. In this paper we survey recent theoretical results concerning conditions for equitable colorability of some graphs and recent theoretical results concerning the complexity of equitable coloring problem. Next, since the general coloring problem is strongly NP-hard, we report on practical experiments with some efficient polynomial-time algorithms for approximate equitable coloring of general graphs.