Fractional colorings of cubic graphs with large girth

Abstract

We show that every (sub)cubic n-vertex graph with sufficiently large girth has fractional chromatic number at most 2.2978 which implies that it contains an independent set of size at least 0.4352n. Our bound on the independence number is valid to random cubic graphs as well as it improves existing lower bounds on the maximum cut in cubic graphs with large girth.