Generalised Mycielski Graphs and Bounds on Chromatic Numbers

We prove that the coindex of the box complex B(H) of a graph H can be measured by the generalised Mycielski graphs which admit a homomorphism to it. As a consequence, we exhibit for every graph H a system of linear equations solvable in polynomial time, with the following properties: If the system has no solutions, then coind(B(H))+2 ≤ 3; if the system has solutions, then χ(H) ≥ 4. We generalise the method to other bounds on chromatic numbers using linear algebra.