Is there an algorithm that decides, for input graphs and , whether there exists a homomorphism from to in time for some constant ?
An affirmative answer is known in several cases: if (graph coloring) [L], [BH], [K]; if has bounded treewidth [FHK]; if has bounded cliquewidth [W].
Bibliography
[BH] Andreas Björklund, Thore Husfeldt: Inclusion--Exclusion Algorithms for Counting Set Partitions, Proc. FOCS'06 (2006).
*[FHK] Fedor V. Fomin, Pinar Heggernes, Dieter Kratsch: Exact Algorithms for Graph Homomorphisms, Theory Comput. Syst. 41 (2007), no. 2, 381--393. MathSciNet
[K] Mikko Koivisto: An Algorithm for Graph Coloring and Other Partitioning Problems via Inclusion--Exclusion, Proc. FOCS'06 (2006).
[L] Eugene L. Lawler: A note on the complexity of the chromatic number problem, Information Processing Lett. 5 (1976), no. 3, 66--67. MathSciNet
[W] Magnus Wahlström: New Plain-Exponential Time Classs for Graph Homomorphism, CSR2009, LNCS5675 (2009), 346--355.
* indicates original appearance(s) of problem.